CLAD IN HIS CRISP NEW Khaki Shirts uniform and black riding boots, Waters hurried up the interior staircase of the State, War and Navy Building. Accompanying him were two BEF staff men and Herbert Ward, a local attorney who had donated his time to help find housing for the veterans. Waters could almost taste the rarefied air of power here. For all of these many months, the president had adamantly refused to meet with him, not wishing to be photographed with the lowly of this world. Now, reaching the top floor, he realized that this was as close as he had ever gotten to that Quaker recluse. He paused at a window and searched the White House grounds across the way, hoping to catch a glimpse of the famous medicine ball. But all he saw were lines of armed Secret Service agents stationed around the perimeter fence to fend off the feared Communist attacks.
Never mind old Herbert. The man wasn’t long for the Oval Office anyway, not with Roosevelt promising relief to the common folk. Today he would be negotiating with the real powerbrokers in the government. At long last, he was about to fulfill his dream of meeting his hero. That morning, General MacArthur’s courier had personally delivered the invitation to Anacostia. He still couldn’t quite believe that the Beau Brummel of the Marne was requesting a meeting with him. Generals ordered enlisted men to their headquarters, but they requested meetings with fellow commanders.
Mac must have finally discovered that another military man of consequence now resided in the city. Probably dawned on him last night, after that loudmouth Royal Robertson conceded defeat and took off for California in his traveling gallows getup. Mac had taken long enough to come to his senses, that was for damn sure. Hell, the general had never even once come down to the camp to speak to the men.
But all was forgiven now. With Mac championing their cause, it wouldn’t be long before they’d find a home, maybe even get their Bonus. He just wished Alford were with him to savor the triumph. But his trusted advisor had gone off again without leaving word of his whereabouts. Knowing Georgie, he was probably in Virginia or Maryland somewhere trying to forage spoiling hamburger for the boys.
He walked down the long hall and came to a set of mahogany doors that held a metal nameplate: Office of the Chief of Staff. Before knocking, he whispered the drill that he had practiced as a boy to smooth out his words. “Just my daggum luck.… Just my daggum luck.… Just my daggum luck.”
“Walter, are you okay?” asked Ward.
Waters nodded, holding his right hand to stifle its shaking.
Just then, Major Eisenhower, MacArthur’s adjutant, turned the corner. “Gentlemen, General MacArthur and the Secretary are waiting. Follow me.”
“Secretary?”
Eisenhower maintained a stony expression. “The meeting will be in Secretary Hurley’s office.”
Waters grinned as he and his BEF men were led to an office several doors down the hall. Hurley was Hoover’s main mouthpiece, so that meant Hoover himself would be as good as in the room. Eisenhower escorted them into the Secretary of War’s massive office and closed the door behind them. Across the room, Patrick Hurley sat behind a desk festooned with Indian arrowheads, stone tomahawks, and other New Mexico artifacts. The War Department chief took a pained look at his guests and set his jaw in disdain. With a snap of his wrist, he silently motioned them toward a row of chairs that had been set up in front of him as if ready for a seated firing squad.
Behind Hurley, a tall, erect man paced back and forth with his hands clasped behind his back. Several seconds passed before Waters realized that the meditating walker was General MacArthur in civilian clothing. Waters bounded up from his chair to offer his hand to his hero. “General, by God you gave ’em hell in the Argonne. You and I were in the same sector, from what I’ve been told.”
MacArthur kept his arms behind his back, and continued pacing.
Waters figured the general didn’t realize who he was, so he introduced himself. “I’m Commander Waters.”
MacArthur grimaced at hearing that absurd honorific.
“Have a seat, Mr. Waters,” ordered Hurley.
Confused by the frigid welcome, Waters took a chair whose legs appeared shaved down to force the occupant to sit lower than the desk.
Hurley stared down at him, as if wondering how such a slight, unimpressive man could have caused so much trouble. In a paternalistic tone, the War Secretary said, “It is time for you to leave.”
Waters found it difficult to focus while MacArthur remained in perpetual motion. “But we just got here. We ain’t even exchanged pleasantries.”
“Your… ” Hurley stopped to search for the appropriate word, which he enunciated with dripping condescension. “It’s time for you and your people to leave the city.”
Blindsided, Waters stole a worried glance at his attorney and staffers, who had turned wan. “I thought we were here to discuss the Bonus.”
“These veterans you’ve brought here are a threat to the government!” Hurley insisted. “The President wants you to go back home without delay!”
Waters edged up on his chair. “How come Hoover won’t tell me that to my face?”
MacArthur, pacing faster behind Hurley, shot Waters a glare of worthy of Zeus examining a pitiful mortal about to be zapped.
“The President is a busy man,” Hurley said. “He has no time to waste on local police matters.”
Waters pressed a hand to his knee in protest. “Local police matters? Hell, this is a countrywide matter. The whole damn nation is starving.”
Hurley yanked defiantly at the tips of his vest. “There is no one starving in this country! I have toured the nation, and I can assure you that there is absolutely no one starving. Any man willing to work hard can amass a fortune here. Look at me. A few years ago, I started with a cow and a pig on a poor piece of ground. Now I’m a millionaire.”
“Come out to Oregon and I’ll take you on another tour. I’ll show you men who look worse than those German fellas the general and I saw crawling on the Boche streets after the war on the Rhine.” He looked up at MacArthur, who was now turning to and fro like a wooden duck in a carnival shooting gallery. “You remember them poor fellows on their last legs, don’t you, General?”
MacArthur could barely bring himself to deign an answer. “You dare to compare this country to Germany?”
“That’s not what I meant now, General, and you know it.”
Hurley’s attitude turned even more belligerent. “You and this so-called Bonus Army have no business in Washington. It is the policy of the government to get you out of the city as quickly as possible. At the first sign of disorder—”
“D-d-disorder?” Waters felt his tongue quivering, betraying him the way it used to do when he was nothing but a vagabond. “We ain’t hurt a f-f-flea since we been here!”
“We have the means to get you out,” Hurley warned.
Dumbfounded, Waters leaned forward. “What are you t-t-talking about?”
The phone rang, and Hurley picked it up. He said to the other voice on the line, “Hold dinner. I may be here a while.”
While the War Secretary spoke to his wife, Waters glanced up with plaintive eyes at MacArthur. “General, many of my men out there fought for you.”
Still in motion, MacArthur struck his favorite martial pose, protruding his chin and thrumming his right hand against his thigh. “Those malingerers across the river are not my men. None of my men ever turned Communist.”
“There ain’t a Red amid us!”
“Our intelligence confirms otherwise.” MacArthur conducted a sneering inspection of Waters’s uniform. “Did you also copy that from the Germans?”
“I g-g-gotta right to wear a uniform. We’re a d-d-duly constituted army, with officers and r-r-ranks. Nobody objected in 1917 when we were issued —”
MacArthur turned his back, curtly cutting him off.
Finishing his phone call, Hurley slammed his palm against the desk to regain the BEF commander’s attention. “Enough about the past, Mr. Waters. We’ve had reports that the Reds in your camp are plotting a new wave of violence.”
Waters couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “We can’t please you politicians. If we b-b-bust the heads of Pace’s troublemakers, the c-c-cops hound us for breaking the peace. And if we d-d-don’t give them the knuckle sandwiches, you and the president call us Red sympathizers. Why d-d-don’t you arrest the t-t-troublemakers if you know who they are?”
“We know who they are,” said Hurley. “And so do you.”
“My men will join up to f-f-fight ’em.”
“Under no circumstances will you in any way ever again be associated with the Army,” Hurley said. “We don’t need you. We don’t want you.”
Waters felt his chest tighten. “We got nowhere to g-g-go.”
“That’s not our problem.”
“We need to find a permanent camp before we can leave.”
“This isn’t Russia,” Hurley said. “Americans don’t live in communes.”
“I can’t tell go out there and just tell my m-m-men to walk off without giving them some hope of a p-p-place to put some shelter over their f-f-families. They won’t heed me if I issue such an order.”
Hurley glared at him. “You’re not much of a commander then, are you?”
Waters turned to his staffers for support, but they had their heads down, slumped in defeat. He realized, too late, that he had severely miscalculated. These military men had never intended to help him. He had walked into an ambush. Seeing no alternative to surrender, he managed to ask weakly, “Can you at least s-s-spare us some tents?”
Hurley turned to MacArthur, “Is there any tentage available?”
“No.”
“You see, Mr. Waters,” Hurley said. “The War Department has no tents available. And even if it did, I would not place them at your disposal. So, let us agree upon a timetable for getting your people evacuated and returning this city to its rightful owners.”
“I’ll need a couple weeks—”
“Tomorrow night is the deadline.”
Waters was breathing hard now, trying to find air above the miasma of pipe smoke. “I’m w-w-willing to try a gradual evacuation, but that’s t-t-too soon. I got the women and children to think about. I can’t just set them off d-d-down the road.”
“I am not without feeling for the women and children,” Hurley said. “Since you’ve now agreed to evacuate, let me call General Hines at the Veterans Bureau and see what can be done to help them.” He ordered his secretary to place the call, and moments later he spoke into the receiver. After a cryptic discussion, Hurley dropped his voice and said to General Hines on the other line, “So you think that if Waters were out of the picture for forty-eight hours the thing would break up?” Hurley pondered for a moment, and then told General Hines, “Well, maybe you’re right.”
Waters turned inward, struggling to wrangle his wits. One enigmatic statement from Hurley’s telephone conversation lingered in his ear.
If Waters were out of the picture.
Hurley hung up. “I was hoping we might utilize Fort Hunt for a few days to house the families, until they got on the road. Unfortunately, General Hines is closing the fort in August.” He shrugged. “I tried my best.”
Waters sat numb, unable to comprehend how he would tell the men that they would have to leave the city within hours. His lawyer and staffers, seeing the hopelessness of the situation, begged out of the meeting and left him abandoned. He sat there for four more hours, harangued and browbeaten on the specifics on the looming evacuation.
All the while, MacArthur never ceased pacing.
Late for dinner at his home in Georgetown, Hurley stood and announced that the meeting was over. “Mr. Waters,” he said, donning his felt hat. “By tomorrow night, you can either be a big man, or a broken one.” At the door, he turned and added, “You’ll no doubt encounter newspapermen outside wanting to know what we talked about. Tell them that we discussed the economic situation in America, and leave it at that.”
Hungry and exhausted from being double-teamed all afternoon, Waters felt his head spinning, unable to make sense of what had just happened. We have the means to get you out…at the first sign of disorder or bloodshed. Were they setting him up for a fall? So you think that if Waters were out of the picture…
If he went down to Anacostia and told the men they had to evacuate the camp by tomorrow night, there would be a riot. He had twelve thousand veterans scattered around the city in twenty-four camps. How was he supposed to muster them all with transport in twenty-four hours? He had been shot at several times during the past weeks. He’d always thought it was the Communists out to get him, or Robertson and his gang of intimidators, but now he wondered if undercover government agents had fired those bullets. Why was the Administration insisting on evacuating Camp Glassford on Pennsylvania Avenue first? Everyone knew those Texas boys bunking over there were stubborn and tough, easy to taunt into a fight.
Then it dawned on him. This is what Hoover and Hurley want.
Why hadn’t he seen this before? They were trying to trick him into giving the Army an excuse to use their guns. He had been dealt a stinking hand, a couple of lousy threes against the government’s full house. He was gonna have to pull off a hell of a bluff, or all was lost.
As he stood slowly, his legs threatened to fail. He braced against the back of the chair and saluted MacArthur. “General, will you p-p-promise to give us the opportunity to f-f-form in columns, salvage our b-b-belongings, and retreat in orderly f-f-fashion?”
For the first time since the meeting started, MacArthur stopped pacing. With a thin smile, he turned and assured Waters, “Yes, my friend. Of course.”