D-Day 2025: March on the Nation’s Capital

America’s veterans rise up to protest massive cuts in VA services and stand for their rights and benefits.

May 10, 2025

43,000 Bonus Marchers converge on Capitol Hill, July 1932

It was 1932… the height of the Great Depression. Millions of Americans could not find work and faced hunger, malnutrition, and fear of starvation. Soup kitchens and breadlines became common as people struggled to survive.

Veterans from WWI were no exception. They had served in one of the deadliest conflicts in history and were issued promissory notes that they would one day receive bonuses, but not until almost three decades after the war ended.

Given the desperate circumstances, 34-year-old retired Army Sergeant Walter Waters of Portland, Oregon, launched a movement seeking early payments. It was dubbed the “Bonus Expeditionary Force,” a movement that spread across the nation.

Seventeen thousand veterans from across the nation, joined by tens of thousands of supporters, including their wives and children, trekked on foot, by boxcar, in caravans of cars, and piled onto dilapidated trucks to converge on Washington, DC. It was called the “Bonus March.”

Day One of the veteran protest at the Capitol in Washington, DC, July 5, 1932

They built shantytowns and protested every day for seventy-five days, refusing to leave until the promissory notes were paid.

Frank Tracy of Pittsburgh, Pa., and his six children are photographed in front of their tent shelter in one of the Bonus Expeditionary Force's encampments around Washington D.C., June 19, 1932. Left to right is Virginia, 12, Frank, 9, Margaret, 7, Ethel, 4 1/2. In Tracy's arms are Howard, 3, Ruth, 1. They are shown saluting their father as an observance of Father's Day. AP

The Republican administration of Herbert Hoover refused to pay the veterans, and then attacked.

The Hoover administration claimed to have a secret document proving the march was a communist plot. On July 28, 1932, General Douglas MacArthur, along with 1,000 troops wielding bayonets and tear gas, drove the Bonus Army out of Capitol Hill.

Along with numerous injuries, two marchers, both WWI veterans, were killed that day, shot by local police. MacArthur’s men then set the Bonus Army’s shantytowns ablaze.

A federal soldier patrols a burning shantytown on the Anacostia Flats in Washington, D.C., July 29, 1932

Many veterans feel they are under assault once again.

The Trump/Musk Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is now threatening to cut 80,000 jobs from the Veterans Administration, which is already experiencing widespread disruption to medical research, patient care, and staffing due to DOGE.

Once again, many veterans across the nation feel betrayed.

On June 6th, the anniversary of D-Day, thousands of veterans, military families, and their supporters plan to converge on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to “defend the benefits, jobs, and dignity that every generation of veterans has earned through sacrifice.”

From the Unite for Veterans website:

Why We Rally

Veterans and military family members are being fired by the thousands from federal jobs. Our healthcare is being gutted. Our benefits are under siege.

This isn't the first time veterans have had to fight for what was promised. From the Bonus Army of 1932 to the battles for the GI Bill and Agent Orange care, veterans have always led the charge for justice.

Now, it's our turn. We rally to:

Defend veteran and military family member employment in the federal workforce
Stop the privatization and weakening of the Department of Veterans Affairs
Hold political leaders accountable for policies that harm veterans and their families

Veteran jobs, healthcare, and essential VA services are under attack. We will not stand by.

POSTSCRIPTS:

Already reeling from the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover’s reputation was finished by the assault on the Bonus Marchers. In the fall of 1932, he lost to Franklin D. Roosevelt in a landslide. The veteran bonuses were paid four years later, nine years earlier than scheduled. The protest is a major reason for the creation of the GI Bill in 1944. There was no secret “Communist” document, as the Hoover Administration claimed. The protestors were American heroes who had served their country with honor.

As Iraq War veteran and veteran’s rights activist Kris Goldsmith notes about the current attacks on the VA and veteran benefits: “This isn’t just an assault on a bureaucracy—it’s an assault on a sacred promise, one rooted in the words of President Abraham Lincoln: to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan. That promise has been the guiding mission of the VA for over 150 years, and it is now under threat from within.”