# Canonical recap data for Bonus Army Marches on Washington (1932)
# Source: https://recap.at/1932/bonus-army-march
# Format: YAML 1.2 (UTF-8). Generated at request time.
slug: bonus-army-march
canonicalUrl: "https://recap.at/1932/bonus-army-march"
title: Bonus Army Marches on Washington
subtitle: Thousands of jobless World War I veterans descended on the capital demanding early payment of service bonuses, reflecting Depression-era desperation and civil unrest.
recapType: global_event
eventStatus: concluded
startDate: 1932-07-28
datePrecision: day
year: 1932
decade: 1930
country:
name: United States
slug: united-states
summaryShort: The Bonus Army, a group of 43,000 demonstrators—17,000 veterans of U.S. involvement in World War I, their families, and affiliated groups—gathered in Washington, D.C., in mid-1932 to demand early cash redemption of their service-bonus certificates. Organizers called the demonstrators the Bonus Expeditionary Force (B.E.
summaryLong: The Bonus Army, a group of 43,000 demonstrators—17,000 veterans of U.S. involvement in World War I, their families, and affiliated groups—gathered in Washington, D.C., in mid-1932 to demand early cash redemption of their service-bonus certificates. Organizers called the demonstrators the Bonus Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.), to echo the name of World War I's American Expeditionary Forces, while the media referred to them as the "Bonus Army" or as "Bonus Marchers". The demonstrators were led by Walter W. Waters, a former sergeant. Many of the war veterans had been out of work during the early years of the Great Depression. The World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924 had awarded all U.S. World War I veterans "bonuses" in the form of certificates which they could not redeem until 1945. Each certificate, issued to a qualified veteran soldier, bore a face value equal to the soldier's promised payment with compound interest. The principal demand of the Bonus Army was the immediate cash payment of their certificates.
heroImageUrl: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0e/Bonus_marchers_05510_2004_001_a.gif/1280px-Bonus_marchers_05510_2004_001_a.gif"
heroImageCredit: Wikipedia · "Bonus Army"
importance: 76
sourceConfidence: 75
keyFacts: []
timeline: []
sources:
- url: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army"
  title: Bonus Army
  provider: Wikipedia
related: []
categories:
- protest
metaDescription: The Bonus Army, a group of 43,000 demonstrators—17,000 veterans of U.S. involvement in World War I, their families, and affiliated groups—gathered in Washington
wikidataQid: Q2910386
archiveSnapshots:
- url: "https://web.archive.org/web/20260628031735/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army"
  capturedAt: 2026-06-28
  label: Bonus Army
  originalUrl: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army"
