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Veterans' History: The Rank & File's Story

By VVAW

From the Revolutionary War To the Present

In his diary, veteran Elijah Fisher wrote, "There was so many that come from the Army and the Navy that had no homes, that would work for little or nothing but their vittels, that I could find no employment.... I begun to think over how I had been in the army, what ill success I had met with there, and also how I was wronged by them I worked for at home." (some spelling and words updated by the editor). Veteran Elijah Fisher, facing the same problems as many Vietnam veterans today was mustered Out of the service at the end of the Revolutionary War. His diary is dated 1783!

When VVAW talks about Dewey Canyon III in 1971, we say it was the first time veterans ever demonstrated against a war they were involved in. And that's true, but it was a long ways from the first time that veterans have been involved in direct conflict with the government that sent them off to fight and die. And the reason why the struggle of veterans dates back to the days following the Revolutionary War is, in part, captured in the diary of the veteran Elijah Fisher. To varying degrees vets have had questions about the wars that the U.S. was fighting; and almost universally, vets have had problems once they have gotten out of the service.

No jobs was only one question for the Revolutionary War veteran... A large number of the 210,000 men who served were farmers, often owning or paying on their own small plots of land. While speculators, merchants, and even some of the leaders of the Revolution were getting rich during the war, these same small farmers had to borrow like mad to keep their lands. In the prosperity immediately after the war, there was no problem, but when the inevitable recession set in, the vets were finding their land being seized by the courts, and they were being hauled off to debtors' prisons.

A group of 1500 men, mostly vets, kept courts from opening in Northampton, Massachusetts. In Groton, vets built barricades from fence-posts until the judges left the court. When the Supreme Court of Mass. tried to indict the leaders of this rebellion, 700 men marched to the courthouse and there were no indictments.

Out of this turmoil came Daniel Shays. A respected Revolutionary veteran, Shays and his men closed down courts in western Massachusetts for three months and, in January of 1787, he led 1100 men toward the arsenal at Springfield, Mass.

$20,000 came from wealthy Bostonians who saw their position threatened; it went to call the Massachusetts Militia into action. But the vets in the militia, in their first confrontation with Shays' army, fired into the ground (something that would happen again when veterans met veterans during the 1932 Bonus March). But Shays army was no match for the militia and finally Shays' army was scattered.

But their efforts were far from a loss. Debtors' prisons were abolished. Debts were made easier to repay. As one historian, a year after Shays' Rebellion put it, "farmers did not think it fair that they had shed blood in the field only to be worn out by taxes at home, or fought for the rights of their creditors to drag them off to prison."

Then, now, and during the period in between, vets fought for what they needed. When clothing allowances didn't come following the Revolution, vets chased the Continental Congress with bayonets--and got the allowances. When Milwaukee vets, in 1978, demanded open disability hearings, enough vets went to the V.A. as a group to once again force the government to give them what they wanted.

The confrontation between veterans and the government continued after each war. In 1812 following the War of 1812, an organized group of veterans forced Congress to pay for non-service disabilities as well as award payments for injuries in the military. And the Civil War set the stage for another confrontation.

The Grand Army of the Republic was the veterans' organization that grew from the Civil War. Red tape, a problem then like now, was one of the vets' biggest problems. They won the right to pensions but had to fill out such a maze of forms and paperwork that many vets couldn't deal with them. That meant, on one hand, that the politicians could dangle the promise of pensions knowing they would never have to hand out the bucks. Worse even than the politicians were the "claims agents" who, according to a government investigator of the time, "would sit at the pay offices on pay days and seize the pensions of frightened, ignorant privates, frequently retaining more than half of it for themselves...." The fight of vets continued, however, and even after the beginning of World War I they forced an increase in the categories of vets eligible for pensions.

It was over thirty years until the next major military venture of the U.S. government--the Spanish-American War marked the first time that U.S. troops had been sent off in a war to gain territory outside the U.S. U.S. imperialism was getting a foothold on the world scene. Veterans of that war banded together in the Spanish-American War Veterans, a group which still exists today. But the rumblings that would become World War I followed so closely that the struggle of Spanish-American War vets barely had time to get started.

The business interests that ran the U.S. were well aware that vets had been a force in earlier wars. And when World War I dragged on to an end, they were ready with what they saw as a remedy for the problem. It was an era when turning over the old social order was on the minds of millions; in Russia, long a bastion of feudal ideas, saw the Bolshevik Revolution, and workers around the world saw a ray of hope. U.S. troops in Europe were influenced by the wave of revolutionary ideas and, at home, up to half a million men claimed conscientious objector status to avoid being to the trenches of Europe. Among the American people there were millions who saw the war as being fought for the interests of big business--and they wanted no part of it. Such ideas, as well as those they found in Europe, also affected many of the 4 million men mobilized to fight the war.

How to deal with the problem? The official "History of the American Legion" set the guidelines:

Morale was shot to pieces. You heard every day ... something had to be done ... measures be devised to give outlet ... when the men got home and were demobilized. If not, anything might happen ... 'Bolshevik' movement to date had its inception among disaffected troops or soldiers newly discharged..."

So a meeting, held in secret under orders from the headquarters of the U.S. forces in Europe, brought together 20 high-ranking officers, in Paris 1918. The result was the American Legion, specifically designed to provide the outlet for veterans under the guidance of the government. Over the years the American Legion has served the government well. Not only has it diligently supported each and every war the U.S. government has fought, but has tried to create more--invasion of Panama a year ago being only one of the more recent ideas of the Legion leadership. Supporting strikebreakers, and actually serving as strikebreakers during the 1930's placed the Legion squarely in the pocket of big business--that's where they came from in the first place and where they have stayed ever since.

But though the Legion (and sister organizations like the VVAW) attracted millions of vets they could not subdue the will to fight back. Black vets were among the fiercest fighters--the 367,000 thousand Blacks who fought in the war were commanded by white officers, but when they came home to find the KKK on the rise, and when 14 Black GIs in uniform were lynched in the years immediately after the war, they had enough. Riots broke out in Chicago, in Charleston, in Knoxville, and Washington, DC. Faced by the racism and by the economic situation, it's no surprise that Black vets were an integral part of the Bonus March of World War I vets which took place 14 years after the end of World War I.

After each war veterans have come home to he faced with the same sorts of problems--as true in 1787 as in 1979. They have been away from family and friends and from their jobs. They have to start again. And the economic history of the U.S. shows a consistent pattern: after each war there is a short period of economic prosperity followed by a period of recession.

Never was this more true than after World War I. The prosperity was dizzying; jobs were available, if not plentiful. The economy was leaping forward. But the crash which followed was equally big. The result was the Depression. The heart-rending pictures of the World War I vet standing in the street with a sign saying "Buy an apple so I can support my family" were real. But vets had been promised a bonus (actually, readjusted pay) as a result of their service in World War I. And in the midst of the Depression, even the small amount that the Bonus represented looked big.

Congress, however, which could come up with millions for big business refused to pay the Bonus, insisting instead that it be delayed (there wasn't enough money, they said).

A group called the Ex-Serviceman's League first suggested there be a number of veterans who would come together in Washington to demand immediate payment of the Bonus. They had already led several small demonstrations. But the idea caught on, far beyond the dreams of the original organizers. From around the country, vets banded together and started for Washington. They had no jobs, nothing to keep them at home; their families were starving. And here was, for many of them, a chance to let Congress hear their side of the story.

By mid-June there were 25,000 vets and their families in Washington. They'd commandeered railroad cars, fought with police, been fed by friendly farmers and threatened by State governors. Despite everything, they'd persisted and were neither scared away nor bought off.

In makeshift camps, and buildings seized from the government, they got by in the nation's capital. They lobbied and marched, got promises from frightened Congressmen. The military was called out but refused to fire on veterans. But finally, when push came to shove, the Congress voted with the monied interests and denied the vets their Bonus. And President Hoover, who saw a revolution in the making, brought in special troops who had not been close to Washington during the weeks of the vets' struggle.

Under Douglas MacArthur, Chief of Staff, and his aide, Dwight D Eisenhower, and tank commander George Patton, the military was used to force the vets out of Washington. Though they fought back as best they could, the bricks and stones of the vets were no match for Patton's tanks or the bayonets of the troops. The vets were forced out, two men losing their lives in the fight to get what was rightfully theirs.

Unlike the American army in World War I, the Bonus army was integrated. And, though it was driven out of the capital, it won--the Bonus was paid and the basis was laid for unemployment insurance, another demand of the vets.

The government tried another approach at the end of World War II when they were faced with up to 14 million vets suddenly flooding the U.S. The U.S. was sitting on top of the world since none of the war had been fought on U.S. soil. The government could afford to try to buy off veterans. Before the war was over, Congress had passed the GI Bill; when housing became a major issue, old barracks were rapidly transformed into homes which still dot some college campuses. In short, the government could afford to give vets what was necessary to keep them quiet, if not content. Since that time, with the change in the position of the U.S. in the world, the history of the government and its veterans shows the government attempting to take back all it gave to World War II vets with more recent veterans trying to hold on. That's why, although the government, until recently, couldn't do away with the GI Bill the Bill today is more than 200% less in terms of buying power than it was in 1946.

The big plan of the World War II government to deal with veterans, however, never did get going. That was to keep the vets as GIs, moving veterans from the European theater of operations to the Pacific where they could be used in China in support of Chaing Kai-Shek to stop the Revolution which was well under way. These plans ran afoul of the American GI--the "Back Home" movement sprang up both in Europe and in the Pacific theatre, and the U.S. troops were in fact brought back home. Millions went to school; millions used the GI home loans at a time when housing was in desperately short supply. Millions, too, joined the American Legion and VFW as places where they could socialize with their friends (unlike Vietnam, almost everyone of military age was in fact in the military). The American Veterans Movement had some successes in organizing vets, particularly around housing, but for white veterans (minority vets had other problems) they were in fact the "mainstream" that Carter now likes to talk about.

Only five years after the end of World War II, U.S. imperialism tried to flex its new-found muscles in Korea. Vets of that war came back to McCarthyism, red scares and an era of Eisenhower do-nothing-ness. And so it was the war in Vietnam which once again energized the movement of veterans in their struggle against the government. For the role played by VVAW in that struggle, see the VVAW History in the center section of this paper.

That struggle is far from over. It has stretches far beyond vets and even their families and, with activities planned for Vietnam Veterans Week, shows no sign of stopping.