Abstract
Abstract An army of the unemployed marched on Washington in 1932, disrupting the capital and the sedate existence of its press corps. A good many Washington reporters had grown accustomed to gathering news through press releases and briefings, routines they called “no more exciting than knitting.” Now they were sent out to cover a “bonus expeditionary force” of desperate veterans of the World War, who had come to urge the passing of a bill that would grant early payment of a promised veteran’s bonus, not due for another dozen years. When the government attempted to dislodge the marchers from their camps near Pennsylvania Avenue, the protest turned violent. United Press reporter Bill Kerby normally patrolled the quiet corridors of the Interior Department, but he was standing on Pennsylvania Avenue, just a few blocks from the Capitol, when the first fighting erupted between the veterans and the police. Bricks flew, shots rang out, and in the commotion some of the bonus marchers seized Kerby as a hostage.
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