A Square Meal by Jane Ziegelman

Author:Jane Ziegelman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-06-23T16:00:00+00:00

Hunger marchers preparing food on a mobile stove, Washington, D.C. (Authors’ collection)

During the first weeks of the Bonus Army’s encampment, Chief Glassford tried to find some organization that would help feed the veterans, but the city government and various veterans’ groups refused. He went to the Red Cross, but it agreed to donate only a small amount of flour and no milk for the camp’s children. Glassford had better luck with local sports fans, who organized a professional boxing match that raised $2,700 to buy supplies. Finally, however, he had to give primary responsibility for feeding the men, now numbering roughly twenty thousand, to Walter Waters and the other Bonus Army leaders. The feeding system they organized was along the lines of the U.S. Army’s Quartermaster Corps. The men were fed twice a day, early in the morning and again around 4 or 5 p.m. For Waters, finding supplies was a constant challenge:

We managed during the entire time to furnish bread and coffee as a minimum and never once failed. The rest of the menu varied from turtle soup to boiled grits. Only by the narrowest margin on one or two days in July was sufficient food secured to prevent a foodless day. Never was there food in plenty. “This camp oughta be called ‘No Seconds,’” was a remark that sums up the entire food situation. One day there would have been no “firsts” if a manufacturer in New York had not supplied fifteen hundred pounds of meat that was sent down by airplane.19

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