Supporting the Troops, Then and Now

THEN:

The news media called it a ‘Bonus Army’–the assemblage of some 43,000 marchers including 17,000 World War I veterans, their families, and affiliated groups, who protested in Washington, D.C., in spring and summer of 1932. They demanded their bonus cash-payment redemption of their service certificates granted to them eight years earlier via the Adjusted Service Certificate Law of 1924. These bonds had the maturity of twenty years, and could not be redeemed until 1945. However, the coming of the Great Depression destroyed the economy, leaving many veterans jobless.

The march, which set the precedent for the political demonstrations and activism that took place in the U.S. since, was nonetheless brutally suppressed by U.S. Army troops under Douglas MacArthur and George S. Patton. Though probably all were legitimate veterans, MacArthur was convinced that at least 90% of them were fakes. And he refused even to read the President’s direct orders that he not use force. This brutality disgraced Herbert Hoover and contributed to him losing the presidency. However, his successor Franklin D. Roosevelt still refused to redeem their certificates and offered them work in building highways. In 1936 Congress overrode Roosevelt’s veto to allow the veterans to redeem their certificates early. The Bonus Army’s greatest legacy was the G. I. Bill of July, 1944, which helped veterans from the Second World War secure needed assistance from the federal government to help them fit back into civilian life, something the World War I veterans of the Bonus Army had not received.

http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2009/06/page/3/

NOW:

An army sergeant who had received 22 honors including a Combat Action Badge prior to being wounded in Iraq by a mortar shell was told he was faking his medical symptoms and subjected to abusive treatment until he agreed to a "personality disorder"(PD) discharge.

After a doctor with the First Cavalry division wrote he was out for "secondary gain," Chuck Luther was imprisoned in a six- by eight-foot isolation chamber, ridiculed by the guards, denied regular meals and showers and kept awake by perpetual lights and blasting heavy metal music---abuses similar to the punishments inflicted on terrorist suspects by the CIA.

"They told me I wasn't a real soldier, that I was a piece of crap. All I wanted was to be treated for my injuries," 12-year veteran Luther told reporter Joshua Kors of "The Nation" magazine (April 26th). "Now suddenly I'm not a soldier. I'm a prisoner, by my own people. I felt like a caged animal in that room. That's when I started to lose it." The article is called "Disposable Soldiers: How the Pentagon is Cheating Wounded Vets."

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Pentagon-Cheating-Vets-Out-by-Sherwood-Ross-100420-876.html

Some things never change.

sj