Troops drive out veterans with bayonets.

• Position: THE 1930S FLASHBACK - Bonus Expeditionary Force protests - Brief article

August 6, 1932

America received its first taste of class war waged by armed force against ragged, famished poverty last week when Herbert Hoover sent the Army of the United States to crush beneath the ruthless iron heel of conquerors the encampments of the Bonus Expeditionary Force.

Cavalry with bared sabers and infantry with fixed bayonets swept down Pennsylvania Avenue, escorting six huge war tanks. And when the night was done, the pitiful remnants of the bonus army were scattered, dazed, every mind filled with despair as the new city they had built on the Anacostia mud flats went up the skies in flames.

Their huts and shelters in the camp on Pennsylvania Avenue near the foot of the Capitol grounds had been the first attacked. Late in the afternoon Hoover had called on Secretary of War Hurley, who in turn summoned Chief-of-Staff MacArthur, to brush aside the police and drive the former war-heroes from their billets.

The cavalry went first, and drove the crowds of...