Despite inadequate housing, sanitation, and food, the movement’s leader, Walter W. Waters, managed to maintain order and to oust agitators. The bonus bill was defeated in Congress, however, and most of the veterans left for home discouraged. The rest, variously estimated at 2,000 to 5,000, over the next few weeks engaged in protests and near-riots, producing an atmosphere of restlessness and threats of turbulence
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/73256/Bonus-Army
*snip*
“I was horrified to see plain evidence of hunger in their faces.”
Evalyn Walsh McLean was the wife of the owner of the Washington Post and a pillar of Washington Society. She describes the scene as the Bonus Army first entered Washington and marched past her elegant mansion:
“On a day in June, 1932, I saw a dusty automobile truck roll slowly past my house. I saw the unshaven, tired faces of the men who were riding in it standing up. A few were seated at the rear with their legs dangling over the lowered tailboard. On the side of the truck was an expanse of white cloth on which, crudely lettered in black, was a legend, BONUS ARMY.
*snip*
I was burning, because I felt that crowd of men, women, and children never should have been permitted to swarm across the continent. But I could remember when those same men, with others, had been cheered as they marched down Pennsylvania Avenue. While I recalled those wartime parades, I was reading in the newspapers that the bonus army men were going hungry in Washington.
That night I woke up before I had been asleep an hour. I got to thinking about those poor devils marching around the capital. Then I decided that it should be a part of my son Jock’s education to see and try to comprehend that marching. It was one o’clock, and the Capitol was beautifully lighted. I wished then for the power to turn off the lights and use the money thereby saved to feed the hungry.
When Jock and I rode among the bivouacked men I was horrified to see plain evidence of hunger in their faces; I heard them trying to cadge cigarettes from one another. Some were lying on the sidewalks, unkempt heads pillowed on their arms. A few clusters were shuffling around. I went up to one of them, a fellow with eyes deeply sunken in his head.
‘Have you eaten?’ He shook his head.
Just then I saw General Glassford, superintendent of the Washington police. He said, ‘I’m going to get some coffee for them.’
‘All right,’ I said, ‘I am going to Childs’.’
It was two o’clock when I walked into that white restaurant. A man came up to take my order. ‘Do you serve sandwiches? I want a thousand,” I said. “And a thousand packages of cigarettes.’
‘But, lady - ‘
‘I want them right away. I haven’t got a nickel with me, but you can trust me. I am Mrs. McLean.’
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/bonusarmy.htm