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| THE TROUBLE WITH VETERANS by Uncle Russ Scheidler |
RUSS
SCHEIDLER
SCHEIDLER
 |  |  |  |  |
Russ Scheidler served in the U.S.
Marine Corps, 1969-1972, one of
four brothers serving
simultaneously in the Corps. His
older brother, Ed Worthley, died
as a result of two tours in
Vietnam, which prohibited Russ
from serving there. Instead, Russ
was ordered to Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba. After discharge from the
Marines, he was a member of
VVAW.
Russ.scheidler@vetspeak.org
Marine Corps, 1969-1972, one of
four brothers serving
simultaneously in the Corps. His
older brother, Ed Worthley, died
as a result of two tours in
Vietnam, which prohibited Russ
from serving there. Instead, Russ
was ordered to Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba. After discharge from the
Marines, he was a member of
VVAW.
Russ.scheidler@vetspeak.org
patterns can make a veteran feel like he is marking-time (a stagnant
situation) or watching them lead him into an ambush! This is not a new
phenomenon.
Retired, wounded or discharged soldiers from the legions of ancient Rome
were often given plots of land in conquered territories. This kept the
veterans busy (often by removing the former tenants from said land) and
out of Rome itself. It spread and established Roman life-style patterns to
the new territories of the empire so commerce could thrive. It also kept
military veterans away from the unemployed citizens of Rome. Many Roman
citizens could not find work because slaves performed almost all of the
labor.
Let’s see,,, no money and no jobs. What’s a poor Roman citizen to do, but
fall into crime or go to the games where they could watch spectacles of
rape, murder and mayhem? These games were paid for and produced by
the wealthy politicians of Rome primarily to curry votes for their Senate
campaigns. The lower classes could not be allowed to develop their own
leaders.
The most dangerous of those potential leaders would have been military
veterans who would be in no mood to put up with any bullshit. And so, the
first known veteran’s administration was founded to deal with Roman military
veterans who demanded pensions and health care to deal with their injured
bodies and souls. The “Aererium Militare” helped Roman veterans heal
their wounds and then promptly sent them out to the edges of the Empire as
colonists. Had enough Roman veterans found stable lives in the city of
Rome, perhaps it would not have been sacked by the Goths in 410 AD.
The British Empire has long given similar treatment to its veterans,
pensioning some to lands in the reaches of the empire. Nine hundred years
ago when the British Empire needed a Protestant presence in Catholic
Ireland, they shipped over colonists to what is now Northern Ireland. A large
number of that group was military pensioners. The result of that
colonization still lingers today.
At one point during the Elizabethan era, a royal proclamation declared
summary executions for “Mariners, Soldiers and Masterless Men” who did
not leave London, and I mean right now! It seems that British veterans were
left with the choices of becoming either beggars or thieves. As thieves, the
veterans certainly knew how to obtain their bounty.
As early as 1636 in the Plymouth Colony of Massachusetts, it was
determined to assist disabled veterans for the rest of their lives. During the
American Revolutionary War, The Continental Congress gave pensions not
only to disabled veterans, but also to the dependents of those killed in
action. The last payment to the last of those veteran’s dependents went out
in 1911. Whoa! That’s a long time!
At the end of The Revolutionary War, rumors were spread that troops would
be sent home without pay. Whether this was true or not, a group of
Pennsylvania soldiers marched on the Capitol in Philadelphia. They
surrounded the State House and terrorized the assembled Congress.
Unfortunately, the Governor of Pennsylvania could not call out his militia
because that was them outside the State House. General George
Washington sent 1500 troops to quell the disturbance. Needless to say,
some punishments were handed out and most veterans did receive their
back pay and benefits, although, it did take a number of years for that to
happen.
The American Civil War created so many veterans that by the 1870s, more
than 20% of the entire national budget went to veteran’s benefits. Wow!
That is a chunk of change! Much of the problem of dealing with veterans of
The Civil War was eased by the westward expansion of this country into the
lands of Native-Americans. There, veterans of both North and South
responded in a similar manner to the veterans of ancient Rome (by
removing the former tenants from said land). Another result of The Civil
War was the creation of America’s first veteran’s organization, The Grand
Army of The Republic (GAR), membership in which soon became a near
necessity for any northern politician.
At the start of World War I, most workers in America earned about a dollar a
day. That is what American soldiers earned throughout the war. By the
end of WWI, those same civilian jobs were paying $5-$20 a day for the
same work creating the industry of war.
Those businesses which transported the goods of war to Europe through
the U-boat invested North Atlantic were bolstered by the War Risk Insurance
Act of 1914 and the government got into the insurance business. In a move
to allay demand for veteran’s benefits, they offered voluntary War-Risk Life
Insurance to members of the military with premiums paid through payroll
deductions. It was not widely chosen.
Veterans came home with a sense of having missed out on the wartime
boom economy. They had been paid only a dollar a day while civilians that
stayed home saw their wages double, triple and sometimes quintuple. They
also had to compete for the same jobs where those that stayed behind now
had seniority. Meanwhile, all of the companies and corporations doing
business with the government had their War-Risk Insurance paid off in full.
It did not help that prohibition of alcohol was now the law of the land.
The GAR had waned in influence and been replaced by The American
Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). They presented the
veterans cause to Congress. After six years of lobbying, the Legislature
passed the “Adjusted Universal Compensation Act” in 1924 over the veto of
President Calvin Coolidge. This act became known as “The Bonus”. It was
never really a bonus. It was another form of insurance policy backed by the
government. It promised a dollar a day for every day in uniform and
another twenty-five cents for every day spent overseas during The Great
War. Those who were owed fifty dollars or less were paid right away. The
catch was that everyone else was just issued a certificate that could not be
cashed in for twenty years, that is, in 1945. If you died before 1945, your
dependents collected the benefit right then. It didn’t take long for veterans
to refer to it as “The Death Bonus”. Now, it is easy in hindsight to realize
that we had another World War to fight before the insurance premium would
come due. But, it was The Great Depression that brought the bonus front
and center.
In the summer of 1931, a handful of veterans walked around Washington,
DC carrying signs demanding their bonus NOW! In 1932, the number of
veterans and their families demanding the bonus now swelled to from
20,000 to 40,000 depending on who was counting. A community of shacks
was constructed by the vets and their families out of anything they could
find or get donated to them. They remained in Washington, DC throughout
the summer until Congress adjourned for the season. Then General
Douglas MacArthur unceremoniously threw them out of Washington, DC
with the aid of his staff, which included Dwight D Eisenhower and George
Patton. They did it with tanks, tear gas and bayonets and then they burned
the veteran’s shacks.
This was, arguably, the first racially integrated protest the country had seen
since The Civil War. Black and white veterans lived peacefully within their
encampments at a time when it was unheard of in greater America.
The bonus was finally paid to WWI veterans in 1936. This was not until
after several years of congressional lobbying had taken place and the
largest hurricane America had ever seen, in 1935, washed away a couple
hundred veterans that Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) had placed in a
special work project to help build the automobile highway from Miami to Key
West.
World War II veterans benefited from the memory of the 1930s bonus
marches and received what has to be called the best veterans benefits ever
received. Now, right-wing politicians have always fought against giving any
benefits to veterans who had not lost a limb, or worse, in the violent conflicts
of war. They lost that political battle to the post-World War II GI Bill. They
said it would bankrupt the country. Boy, were they wrong!
The World War II GI Bill is generally acknowledged, by most sane
individuals, as one of the most important factors in the greatest social,
economic and political growth spurt of any capitalist nation in the written
history of human kind. Veterans filled the colleges of The United States and
came out as a great rush of engineers, doctors, lawyers and such. An
incredible number of houses were built and bought, creating the world we
now know as “The Suburbs”.
By the mid 1960s, some of the suburbs were growing into middle age and
The Cold War was growing hot again through the client states of The United
States and The Soviet Union. Let us not forget The Korean War (the
forgotten war) of 1951-1953, which was both a postscript of World War II
and an introduction to the wars we still fight today where it becomes ever
more difficult to distinguish friend from foe. Korean War vets had a mixed
bag of experience. Some were able to use what was left of the World War II
GI Bill. Others were left to wither on the vine.
The Vietnam War started at the end of World War II. After 1954,
Vietnamese nationalists forced French colonials out. American “advisers”
moved in with significant numbers in 1961. That war heated up in 1965
after the now recognized as fraudulent Gulf of Tonkin incident. American
troops were brought home in 1972, but South Vietnam did not actually fall
until 1975.
Before the war was even over, some veterans were coming home to horrific
treatment in our, by now, aging Veterans Administration hospitals. The
domestic economy was in a shambles by a war that had been fought on
credit instead of being paid for by War Bonds as we went along. That
system of funding wars had been very successful during both the World
Wars. I believe it was abandoned in fear that the politically powerful and
conservative middle class created after World War II might shift their political
allegiance if they had to give up too much of their hard won gains. And
those were the votes that were keeping the powerful few in power.
Before The Vietnam War ended, millions of veterans were returning to
communities that saw many of them as the problem to their woes and not
the solution. These veterans wanted not only education and health care
benefits, they wanted an end to a war that was not only expanded for a lie
(Gulf of Tonkin Incident), it was being mismanaged by both political and
military leaders. It also showed no end in sight within an economy growing
ever more fragile.
The Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) grew into an internationally
recognized veteran’s organization that had many small victories. They also
had their butts kicked a few times such as at the Republican National
Convention in Miami in 1972 and at the Dewey Canyon IV demonstration in
Washington, DC in 1974.
We’ve had a number of small wars since then in Lebanon, Haiti, El
Salvador, Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, Lebanon again, Somalia, Bosnia,
etc. We are now engaged in war with a bunch of religious fanatics in
Afghanistan and Iraq. Those forces are drawing a large number of their
soldiers from Moslem nations that are supposed to be our friends. This war
also has no end in sight. It is being fought on a credit card to the National
Bank of China with as many paid mercenaries and contractors as we have
real US troops on the ground. Oh yes, and the economy is again in a
shambles.
We are seeing Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Against the War protesting
for reasonable education and health benefits. They are also protesting for
an end to this war (without end, Amen!).
So, we have seen veterans from the ancient Romans to the American
Revolutionary War protest for the wages and back-pay they had been
promised. World War I veterans also protested for the wages they missed
out on by serving in the military. World War II veterans received the best
veteran benefits of all and they did not protest. They contributed to the
biggest economic boom the world has ever seen. Vietnam and current war
vets have protested the wars as they were happening. And why? Because
war is Hell! It always has been and it always will be!
So, where do veterans get off telling their generals and civilian leaders that
the war we are actively fighting is wrong? An Iraq Veteran Against the War
succinctly answered that question at The Winter Soldier Investigation in
Washington, DC at the National Labor College in March of 2008 by stating,
“Well, we’re not really stupid!” And that is the real trouble with veterans.
Semper Fi,
Uncle Russ
July 4, 2008
situation) or watching them lead him into an ambush! This is not a new
phenomenon.
Retired, wounded or discharged soldiers from the legions of ancient Rome
were often given plots of land in conquered territories. This kept the
veterans busy (often by removing the former tenants from said land) and
out of Rome itself. It spread and established Roman life-style patterns to
the new territories of the empire so commerce could thrive. It also kept
military veterans away from the unemployed citizens of Rome. Many Roman
citizens could not find work because slaves performed almost all of the
labor.
Let’s see,,, no money and no jobs. What’s a poor Roman citizen to do, but
fall into crime or go to the games where they could watch spectacles of
rape, murder and mayhem? These games were paid for and produced by
the wealthy politicians of Rome primarily to curry votes for their Senate
campaigns. The lower classes could not be allowed to develop their own
leaders.
The most dangerous of those potential leaders would have been military
veterans who would be in no mood to put up with any bullshit. And so, the
first known veteran’s administration was founded to deal with Roman military
veterans who demanded pensions and health care to deal with their injured
bodies and souls. The “Aererium Militare” helped Roman veterans heal
their wounds and then promptly sent them out to the edges of the Empire as
colonists. Had enough Roman veterans found stable lives in the city of
Rome, perhaps it would not have been sacked by the Goths in 410 AD.
The British Empire has long given similar treatment to its veterans,
pensioning some to lands in the reaches of the empire. Nine hundred years
ago when the British Empire needed a Protestant presence in Catholic
Ireland, they shipped over colonists to what is now Northern Ireland. A large
number of that group was military pensioners. The result of that
colonization still lingers today.
At one point during the Elizabethan era, a royal proclamation declared
summary executions for “Mariners, Soldiers and Masterless Men” who did
not leave London, and I mean right now! It seems that British veterans were
left with the choices of becoming either beggars or thieves. As thieves, the
veterans certainly knew how to obtain their bounty.
As early as 1636 in the Plymouth Colony of Massachusetts, it was
determined to assist disabled veterans for the rest of their lives. During the
American Revolutionary War, The Continental Congress gave pensions not
only to disabled veterans, but also to the dependents of those killed in
action. The last payment to the last of those veteran’s dependents went out
in 1911. Whoa! That’s a long time!
At the end of The Revolutionary War, rumors were spread that troops would
be sent home without pay. Whether this was true or not, a group of
Pennsylvania soldiers marched on the Capitol in Philadelphia. They
surrounded the State House and terrorized the assembled Congress.
Unfortunately, the Governor of Pennsylvania could not call out his militia
because that was them outside the State House. General George
Washington sent 1500 troops to quell the disturbance. Needless to say,
some punishments were handed out and most veterans did receive their
back pay and benefits, although, it did take a number of years for that to
happen.
The American Civil War created so many veterans that by the 1870s, more
than 20% of the entire national budget went to veteran’s benefits. Wow!
That is a chunk of change! Much of the problem of dealing with veterans of
The Civil War was eased by the westward expansion of this country into the
lands of Native-Americans. There, veterans of both North and South
responded in a similar manner to the veterans of ancient Rome (by
removing the former tenants from said land). Another result of The Civil
War was the creation of America’s first veteran’s organization, The Grand
Army of The Republic (GAR), membership in which soon became a near
necessity for any northern politician.
At the start of World War I, most workers in America earned about a dollar a
day. That is what American soldiers earned throughout the war. By the
end of WWI, those same civilian jobs were paying $5-$20 a day for the
same work creating the industry of war.
Those businesses which transported the goods of war to Europe through
the U-boat invested North Atlantic were bolstered by the War Risk Insurance
Act of 1914 and the government got into the insurance business. In a move
to allay demand for veteran’s benefits, they offered voluntary War-Risk Life
Insurance to members of the military with premiums paid through payroll
deductions. It was not widely chosen.
Veterans came home with a sense of having missed out on the wartime
boom economy. They had been paid only a dollar a day while civilians that
stayed home saw their wages double, triple and sometimes quintuple. They
also had to compete for the same jobs where those that stayed behind now
had seniority. Meanwhile, all of the companies and corporations doing
business with the government had their War-Risk Insurance paid off in full.
It did not help that prohibition of alcohol was now the law of the land.
The GAR had waned in influence and been replaced by The American
Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). They presented the
veterans cause to Congress. After six years of lobbying, the Legislature
passed the “Adjusted Universal Compensation Act” in 1924 over the veto of
President Calvin Coolidge. This act became known as “The Bonus”. It was
never really a bonus. It was another form of insurance policy backed by the
government. It promised a dollar a day for every day in uniform and
another twenty-five cents for every day spent overseas during The Great
War. Those who were owed fifty dollars or less were paid right away. The
catch was that everyone else was just issued a certificate that could not be
cashed in for twenty years, that is, in 1945. If you died before 1945, your
dependents collected the benefit right then. It didn’t take long for veterans
to refer to it as “The Death Bonus”. Now, it is easy in hindsight to realize
that we had another World War to fight before the insurance premium would
come due. But, it was The Great Depression that brought the bonus front
and center.
In the summer of 1931, a handful of veterans walked around Washington,
DC carrying signs demanding their bonus NOW! In 1932, the number of
veterans and their families demanding the bonus now swelled to from
20,000 to 40,000 depending on who was counting. A community of shacks
was constructed by the vets and their families out of anything they could
find or get donated to them. They remained in Washington, DC throughout
the summer until Congress adjourned for the season. Then General
Douglas MacArthur unceremoniously threw them out of Washington, DC
with the aid of his staff, which included Dwight D Eisenhower and George
Patton. They did it with tanks, tear gas and bayonets and then they burned
the veteran’s shacks.
This was, arguably, the first racially integrated protest the country had seen
since The Civil War. Black and white veterans lived peacefully within their
encampments at a time when it was unheard of in greater America.
The bonus was finally paid to WWI veterans in 1936. This was not until
after several years of congressional lobbying had taken place and the
largest hurricane America had ever seen, in 1935, washed away a couple
hundred veterans that Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) had placed in a
special work project to help build the automobile highway from Miami to Key
West.
World War II veterans benefited from the memory of the 1930s bonus
marches and received what has to be called the best veterans benefits ever
received. Now, right-wing politicians have always fought against giving any
benefits to veterans who had not lost a limb, or worse, in the violent conflicts
of war. They lost that political battle to the post-World War II GI Bill. They
said it would bankrupt the country. Boy, were they wrong!
The World War II GI Bill is generally acknowledged, by most sane
individuals, as one of the most important factors in the greatest social,
economic and political growth spurt of any capitalist nation in the written
history of human kind. Veterans filled the colleges of The United States and
came out as a great rush of engineers, doctors, lawyers and such. An
incredible number of houses were built and bought, creating the world we
now know as “The Suburbs”.
By the mid 1960s, some of the suburbs were growing into middle age and
The Cold War was growing hot again through the client states of The United
States and The Soviet Union. Let us not forget The Korean War (the
forgotten war) of 1951-1953, which was both a postscript of World War II
and an introduction to the wars we still fight today where it becomes ever
more difficult to distinguish friend from foe. Korean War vets had a mixed
bag of experience. Some were able to use what was left of the World War II
GI Bill. Others were left to wither on the vine.
The Vietnam War started at the end of World War II. After 1954,
Vietnamese nationalists forced French colonials out. American “advisers”
moved in with significant numbers in 1961. That war heated up in 1965
after the now recognized as fraudulent Gulf of Tonkin incident. American
troops were brought home in 1972, but South Vietnam did not actually fall
until 1975.
Before the war was even over, some veterans were coming home to horrific
treatment in our, by now, aging Veterans Administration hospitals. The
domestic economy was in a shambles by a war that had been fought on
credit instead of being paid for by War Bonds as we went along. That
system of funding wars had been very successful during both the World
Wars. I believe it was abandoned in fear that the politically powerful and
conservative middle class created after World War II might shift their political
allegiance if they had to give up too much of their hard won gains. And
those were the votes that were keeping the powerful few in power.
Before The Vietnam War ended, millions of veterans were returning to
communities that saw many of them as the problem to their woes and not
the solution. These veterans wanted not only education and health care
benefits, they wanted an end to a war that was not only expanded for a lie
(Gulf of Tonkin Incident), it was being mismanaged by both political and
military leaders. It also showed no end in sight within an economy growing
ever more fragile.
The Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) grew into an internationally
recognized veteran’s organization that had many small victories. They also
had their butts kicked a few times such as at the Republican National
Convention in Miami in 1972 and at the Dewey Canyon IV demonstration in
Washington, DC in 1974.
We’ve had a number of small wars since then in Lebanon, Haiti, El
Salvador, Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, Lebanon again, Somalia, Bosnia,
etc. We are now engaged in war with a bunch of religious fanatics in
Afghanistan and Iraq. Those forces are drawing a large number of their
soldiers from Moslem nations that are supposed to be our friends. This war
also has no end in sight. It is being fought on a credit card to the National
Bank of China with as many paid mercenaries and contractors as we have
real US troops on the ground. Oh yes, and the economy is again in a
shambles.
We are seeing Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Against the War protesting
for reasonable education and health benefits. They are also protesting for
an end to this war (without end, Amen!).
So, we have seen veterans from the ancient Romans to the American
Revolutionary War protest for the wages and back-pay they had been
promised. World War I veterans also protested for the wages they missed
out on by serving in the military. World War II veterans received the best
veteran benefits of all and they did not protest. They contributed to the
biggest economic boom the world has ever seen. Vietnam and current war
vets have protested the wars as they were happening. And why? Because
war is Hell! It always has been and it always will be!
So, where do veterans get off telling their generals and civilian leaders that
the war we are actively fighting is wrong? An Iraq Veteran Against the War
succinctly answered that question at The Winter Soldier Investigation in
Washington, DC at the National Labor College in March of 2008 by stating,
“Well, we’re not really stupid!” And that is the real trouble with veterans.
Semper Fi,
Uncle Russ
July 4, 2008