Call to action: Veterans coming to DC to Demand support to their mission

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In September, General Petraeus will report to Congress on the status of the mission in Iraq. At that time, members of Congress will decide whether to continue the mission and defeat Al Qaeda, or abandon the mission and surrender to America’s enemies. The stakes could not be higher.

It is absolutely crucial that veterans have a voice in September's debate. And therefore we're asking every Iraq and Afghanistan veteran who believes in the mission - and supports our fellow soldiers and Marines still serving - to converge on Washington, DC on Tuesday, September 18th.

We plan to have hundreds of veterans on Capitol Hill ... and hope you'll be one of them.

We will not be the only group on Capitol Hill in September. At this website you can read about anti-war protesters - and anti-war veterans - who plan to confront members of Congress on September 18th. There will even be Iraq war veterans staging a "die in."

Unlike our opponents, we will not stage protests, chant slogans, or impede the work of government. We will meet constructively with as many members of Congress as we can to express our first-hand experiences and explain why it is important that the sacrifices of our brothers-in-arms not be in vein.

And remember, if you're on active duty - you can still participate. Current DOD regulations allow you to participate as long as you are: 1) out of uniform; 2) not speaking on behalf of "the military"; and 3) not protesting. The same goes for National Guard and Reserve troops. So please join us.

Over 40 Vets for Freedom members joined together on Capitol Hill in July and helped stop Congress from voting to undercut the troops. Don't miss your chance to do the same on September 17 & 18 ... on a much larger scale.

We need you to sign up early. By signing up this week, Vets for Freedom can do the following:

Schedule meetings for you with your Senators and Representative. In July we had to "walk in". On September 18th we want participants to have appointments.

Reserve high-profile speakers to address all Iraq and Afghanistan veterans on Monday night (September 17).

Raise money to support the travel and lodging for ALL veterans. We plan to cover all air and ground travel costs, and lodging for the evening of September 17.

So, if you are an Iraq or Afghanistan veteran and are ready to take a stand and join us on Capitol Hill on September 17 & 18, please send an email to events@vetsforfreedom.org. Include the following information:

If you will be able to arrive on the evening of Monday, September 17 for the formal in-brief and dinner with guest speakers.

Once we receive your information we will schedule meetings with representatives on your behalf and as the date approaches, confirm your lodging in Washington, DC. We are planning on conducting the in-brief on the evening of Monday, September 17 and all the meetings on Tuesday, September 18. For a tentative timeline, see the end of this email.

Donate. In July, thanks to the generous support of hundreds of Americans, we were able to cover the travel of everyone who attended. We hope to do the same in September, but with more veterans, we’ll need more support. We hope you’ll consider a large gift, but we always appreciate any size donation. It was hundreds of smaller donations that covered our July event, and we’d love to do that again.

Get involved in your home state. Last week we asked for State Captains and local volunteers. We still need help. If you’re interested, please review our Week 3 email and get involved. Congress needs to hear from pro-mission veterans and supporters in August - when they’re home meeting with constituents.

Forward this Email. Send this email to everyone you know. Post it on your blog. Print it out and hand it out to friends. Get the word out, so we can get as many veterans on Capitol Hill as possible. Our goal is hundreds of veterans from all parts of our country.

Tell your buddies. Meet them in Washington, DC. And together, tell your representative where we stand.

Don't miss your opportunity to join Vets for Freedom on Capitol Hill and do your part to support our fellow soldiers and Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan.

September 17 4-6pm: Reception and Lodging assistance 6-9pm: In-brief & dinner (with high profile speakers) 9pm: Social Event September 18 9am-12: Meetings on Capitol Hill 12pm-1: Lunch Afternoon: Large Press Conference 1-5pm: Meetings on Capitol Hill

Hopefully it will be more peaceful than in 1932.

Troops Rout the Veterans

WASHINGTON, July 29 (AP) - The four wretched encampments which for two months past have housed the bonus army lay burned to earth early this morning and the veterans that have lived there sought haven in dark streets, on country roads and the path homeward.

One of their number had been shot dead by police. More than fifty veterans, policemen, soldiers and spectators were injured in the battles.

That affray, near the Capitol in the afternoon, led to President Hoover’s calling upon Federal troops to clear the camps, which they did with the use of tear gas.

In late afternoon and early evening they successfully attacked the three shanty sites in the city proper, applying the torch once the veterans had fallen back.

Last night, it had been decided to hold off drastic actions in the main Anacostia camp until today at least. One after another blaze broke out in huts where the veterans were, and that portion of the city was cast in a glare that could be seen by the President as he retired at the White House.

Finally it was determined to let the troops complete the destruction. They did, and set up a guard there such as was watching over the other three scenes of attack.

The numerous blazes which swept across the Anacostia camp followed a few earlier, which started coincidentally with the arrival of the infantry and cavalry. It became a matter of dispute whether the soldiers set off these, or whether the veterans themselves had, or whether it had been the grim police. But there was unanimity that the angered veterans themselves started the final conflagration, since no soldiers were at the huts where the fires originated.

In a statement, Maj. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, chief of staff of the army, expressed his conviction that if the President had not taken his decisive action when he did “the government would have been threatened.”

The President, he said, “had gone the limit in the exercise of patience before he used force.

“I believe he would have been derailed in the duty if he had not acted.”

The drive to clear the Anacostia camp got under way at 10:09, infantrymen among the first of the troops to arrive there hurling tear gas bombs into a crowd that impeded their way.

The troops had been greeted by mingled cheers and boos from thousands of onlookers, many of them women and children, as they went across the bridge that approaches the camp.

Tear gas bombs were thrown indiscriminately to set people back. Women and children ran screaming.

As they reached the end of Anacostia bridge, the infantry swung quickly into line to face a crowd of veterans gathered there on the slope.

In a few moments the familiar white of exploding tear gas bombs floated up and down the hill and the crowd fled. “Give way, boys, give way.”

Meantime, marching with steady tread, other Infantry deployed and behind them came cavalry and heavy lorries carrying tanks and machine guns.

With their horses at a walk the cavalry went down the steep embankment into the camp area, followed immediately by infantrymen, who set fire to a number of huts after first making sure every human had been cleared out.

At the center of the camp a knot of men gathered but was dispersed by Commander Atwell, leader of the camp, who shouted:

“Give way, boys, give way. They’ve got the tanks and you haven’t got a chance in h-—.”

Cavalrymen were lined up in front of the camp which was illuminated by powerful searchlights from fire trucks.

As the cavalry deployed over the wide field of the camp, a courier presented himself from Commander Atwell.

“The commander begs you to wait fifteen minutes to permit the women and children to leave,” said the courier after a salute to Brig. Gen. Miles.

“Are you really leaving?” asked Gen. Miles.

“Yes, sir; the women and children are now departing.”

“How long will it take them?”

“Well sir, I hardly know,” said the courier somewhat nervously.

“We will wait a half hour,” said Gen. Miles courteously.

Meanwhile, the blazes that had been set burned; but further action was held off.

The torches had been applied at the very outset to outlying huts of the camp.

Gen. MacArthur, accompanied by an aid, was surveying the situation.

On the brightly lighted streets of Anacostia above the flats on which the veterans were encamped there was an air of tension.

Apparently Gen. Miles understood the courier to state that all were leaving the camp, but those who heard the conversation reached the conclusion he was presenting a message on behalf of Atwell asking favors only for the women and children.

Gen. MacArthur sent a message to the commander of the camp that he had been ordered to evacuate it and that he had found it substantially evacuated.

He sent word, however, that he would give these remaining ample time in which to leave.

Meanwhile, the cavalry surrounded the camp in a great semicircle, the horses and their riders standing somberly in the dark awaiting further orders.

It was clear that the troops were on the alert, in case of attack on them.

The great body of spectators were pushed safely backward a half mile from the camp by tear gas bombs, and policemen held them back.

Atwell had walked out on to the broad parade ground of the camp waving his shirt as a flag of truce to meet Gen. MacArthur.

Returning alone, just as he set out, Atwell told his men in a tense voice.

“They gave us one hour.”

He also told the men gathered about him as he returned that there was a group of the veterans gathered at the rear of the camp who wanted to fight.

Before leaving Anacostia for the night, Gen. MacArthur made a final inspection of the troops.

The army chief then returned to Washington and, joined by secretary Hurley of the War Department, called on President Hoover at the White House to report on the situation. MacArthur and Hurley then went across the street to the War Department for a final conference about plans for today.

Out at Anacostia, meanwhile, blazes sprung up in several sections of the camp, set by the veterans themselves, and seeming to threaten the motley expanse of shanties and tents.

Some of the property destroyed, besides the crudely constructed huts, included National Guard tents loaned to the veterans when they first came to Washington.

Military police of the bonus army, on instruction from Atwell, went through the camp and told all the men to move out and offer no resistance.

Some men started almost immediately, although some declared they wished to stay and fight.

One man, who had been living in a National Guard tent, set fire to his bed inside the tent before departing. Some of his companions, however, seeing what he had done, returned and extinguished the flames.

Despite the light cast by burning shacks at one end of the camp and ignited tenting and board huts, the closely packed troops on the broad parade ground were not visible to the veterans who stayed behind in the camp, congregated in groups from which cat calls and yells were directed toward invisible troops.

The men were moved forward unseen by having them advance behind the truck mounted floodlights. When the lights were extinguished the entire field appeared dark and figures could not be discerned moving about on it unless an observer approached within 100 feet.

On foot, riding in overloaded trucks and passenger cars of every description, the veterans poured up the narrow street leading from the camp.

Some of the men on foot carried blanket rolls, odds and ends of cooking utensils and even articles of furniture. One man was carrying a bedraggled American flag. Another veteran said to him: “I wouldn’t bother with that now, buddy. They won’t pay any attention to it.”

A traffic jam developed in the narrow street as lumbering trucks and cars struggled to leave the encampment. Here and there a car stalled, and its occupants jumped out to push the machine on up the hill.

“What’s the trouble?” one veteran asked the driver of his truck.

“We haven’t got enough gas to get up the hill,” the driver replied.

Fire apparatus was nowhere in sight as one after another blaze sprang up. Police said Brig. Gen. Pelham D. Glassford, chief of the metropolitan police, nipped an apparent plot to set fire to a large area of the Anacostia business section.

A sound of splintering wood was heard from the shanties just twenty yards from a lumber yard, which itself was adjacent to a line of stores.

Glassford was tipped that the bonus marchers were piling the wood up in such a way that any fire set to it would burn to the lumber yard. An investigation by him showed the men piling the wood from the shanties they had torn down in a zigzag line to the bottom of the fence, with boards extending over the fence on both sides. He quickly ordered the fire hazard to the lumber yard torn up.

As the red glare of burning quarters flushed the skies, a straggly line of veterans, burdened with baskets, boxes and suitcases containing their possessions, streamed on from one of the camp exits.

Most of the veterans appeared cheerful, despite the fact that they said they had no place to go for the night. Families of some were to be sheltered overnight by residents of Anacostia, living near the bonus encampment.

The fire gradually spread through the shacks until it lit up the entire place on which the camp is situated. The leaping flames threw into relief the cavalry and infantry waiting on the side near the river and the milling throngs of veterans, some of them pitching equipment and other fuel into the fire.

Many veterans went back until they were on private property, back of the wide semicircle of tents and shacks, and said they intended to spend the night there. Others marched away toward town and still others loaded their cars preparatory to quitting Washington, they said.

Walter W. Waters was not at the camp, veterans said, and there were reports that the leader had left, telling some of his followers to meet him in Johnstown, Pa.

As some of the veterans trudged the streets of Anacostia in small groups with their scanty belongings thrown over their shoulders, others stood by on the hill overlooking the burning camp and declared, “We will build up again tomorrow.”

There was no disorder as the flames swept on.

Many National Guard tents, under bond to the District of Columbia police, went up in the blaze.

Firemen laid a line of hose to play on the tents and estimated they could save about one-quarter.

The gas bombs were thrown from the windward side of the camp, the infantry making a flank movement to the rear.

It only took a few seconds, seemingly, for the vast cloud of fumes to sweep the lowlands occupied by the bonus army.

“Yellow” and “brave boys” were shouted by the defiant veterans as they ran from the place.

There were mingled feelings. Some of the veterans were surly. Others were laughing and shouting.

As the straggling army of veterans trudged across the bridge into Washington, the heavily lined street spectators gave them applause.

There was confusion as to who started the fires. The veterans said the soldiers did it. Others said it was the veterans. Some said the police started them. The police said the government did it, and that’s the way it went.

The troops had been at a distance, however, before the fires started.

Twenty minutes after the order to evacuate was carried out by troops, only a sprinkling of veterans remained in the camp.

Fires still burned in a wide semicircle. They could be seen from all over Washington.

The veterans, in small groups some of them leading children, milled disconsolately about Anacostia. Some of them marched toward the news that they had been turned back by troops guarding bridges. They said the military told them that they were to be refused entrance into Washington.

One large truckload of veterans pulled out saying, “We’re going back to Texas.”

Glassford, his shirt dripping with perspiration, stopped for a moment at a small soda fountain and between gulps of ginger ale said he intended to return to Washington shortly and take most of the police with him.

“There was no disorder during the evacuation of Camp Marks,” he said. Some veterans shook fists menacingly, however, at the soldiers advancing on one side of the fire.

“Yah! What a country!” One veteran shouted.

“This will sure go down in history!” another exclaimed.

“We’ll be better organized next time,” said another.

In the midst of the group watching the fire, a man started playing “When it’s Springtime in the Rockies,” on a harmonica, and was cheered and applauded by his comrades.

A pet dog, the mascot of one of the units, rode on top of a truckload of possessions which a group of veterans rescued from the flames.

The figures of scattered veterans here and there could be seen dimly through the smoke clouds salvaging their belongings from the burning shacks. The last of the automobiles to leave the camp were driven perilously between rows of burning buildings.

Behind a blue mist of tear gas, Federal troops yesterday afternoon cleared the bonus army from their shanty village in the shadow of the Capital, where shortly before one veteran had been shot to death and others injured in fights with the police.

The soldiers were ordered to the scene by President Hoover after District of Columbia authorities admitted defeat.

Retreating sullenly before the rolling barrage of the doughboys’ tear gas bombs, the dispirited bonus seekers trudged away in disorganized huddles, leaderless and thoroughly demoralized, seeking shelter in other open places far and wide through the city.

A few of them nursed minor bruises, the results of their brushes with the police and soldiers, but on the whole the infantrymen did their work without the exercise of actual physical force. Accompanying cavalrymen, however, rode their horses into the crowds on occasion to disperse them.

First a plot of government land at Third and Pennsylvania Avenue, scene of the earlier clash with the police, then other camps a few blocks farther from the Capital, were cleared by the soldiery and left in smoking ruins. The torch was applied by the military to shack and tent left behind by the departed squatters, and the ground made ready for the government building operations which Federal authorities had decided should no longer be interrupted.

Walter W. Waters, the young Oregonian who led the bonus march to Washington, disclaimed responsibility for his followers’ resistance to the first eviction order of the police and said tonight he was through.

The men got out of control, he said. “There was nothing and is nothing I can do to control them.”

With bayonets flashing and dense clouds of smoke mounting over Pennsylvania Avenue as the troops advanced across the litter-strewn areas of the camps already half prepared by the wrecker for the building contractors to follow the afternoon scene was like a leaf out of the book of the great war.

While cavalrymen held back thousands of spectators, infantrymen wearing masks moved methodically through the disputed area dropping their gas bombs. Across the broad avenue stood other troops ready to assist if needed, and on a side street giant army tanks and machine guns were prepared to level off the shanty town which the veterans have stubbornly refused to evacuate.

Before the evacuation was completed, the brilliant afternoon sun had difficulty penetrating the thick mist of rising gas vapors.

Huge army trucks were on hand to carry off those who refused to move and the ambulance strength of the city was mobilized on the spot to care for casualties. Fire apparatus, with sirens wide open, came charging into the area to see that the flames started by the troops did not spread too far.

At one camp in southwest Washington, the troops encountered real resistance. When they began throwing tear bombs into the block, the veterans, who had learned something by then, hurled the bombs back as fast as they hit.

Then in a wild burst of helter skelter riding, the troopers bore down on the massed thousands and hurled them back quickly. The veterans threw sticks and stones, but the casualties apparently were few.

Some bonus seekers refused to budge before the cavalry, but the infantry followed through, and with the butts of their rifles poked the resisting men along into a wild riot.

After clearing the disputed areas in Washington proper, the troops were ordered to finish off the day by breaking up Camp Marks, and main encampment of the veterans on Anacostia river.

President Hoover in ordering out the troops, explained that many of those who remained after Congress adjourned were “not veterans; many are Communist and persons with criminal records.”

By ordering the army to turn over all prisoners to civil authorities, War Department officials avoided the necessity of declaring martial law in the capital.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.