Sunday, April 11, 2010

Lest We Forget: Vets And The Economy

If you think things are bad now... - CNN.com

"...With that, the president of the United States, Herbert Hoover, fearing that radicals had infiltrated the veterans, ordered the Army to take over the involuntary evacuation.

And this country was confronted with the news that the Army was moving against the old soldiers.

At the highest level of the Army assigned to the task were men who would later become extraordinarily famous. Gen. Douglas MacArthur was in command; Maj. Dwight D. Eisenhower was the go-between with the local police force; Maj. George Patton was in charge of the cavalry.

Bayonets were drawn; tanks and soldiers on horseback advanced into the crowds; acrid gas was unleashed on the protesting veterans; the makeshift camps were torn down. Even though President Hoover didn't want it to happen, MacArthur sent his troops across a bridge to the site of the veterans' main living quarters. A fire broke out; it was never determined with certainty who set it, but there it was: the American veterans' cobbled-together homes in flames, as the Army drove them out.

There was no television back then; it is almost impossible to fathom what would have happened if the country had been able to see, live, the military moving relentlessly against former members of the military who were asking for the means to survive..."

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