Memorial Day Remembering Those Who Also Paid Price

This Memorial Day, let's also remember those who nearly made 'the ultimate sacrifice' 
The Star-Ledger
By Mark Di Ionno
May 24, 2015

And now for a Memorial Day history lesson.

The American tradition of treating veterans badly started right here in New Jersey. The Pennsylvania Line of Continental Army --- with their enlistments up -- were forced to stay in service. When they walked off the job at Jockey Hollow in 1781, citing deplorable conditions and lousy pay, it was called a mutiny.

When the New Jersey Line tried it a few weeks later in Pequannock, two mutineers where shot by firing squad.

Nationwide, Civil War veterans suffering from "Soldier's Heart," known today as post-traumatic stress disorder, or "Soldier's Disease" which was addiction to pain-killing heroin, went untreated. They spent their lives in jails, asylums or run-down soldiers' homes.

A large group of unemployed World War I veterans called the "Bonus Army" marched on Washington in 1932. Two were shot and killed by police, and their camp was routed by Army troops led by two famous names in American military history: Douglas MacArthur and George Patton.

In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge vetoed a bill giving those veterans benefits, saying "Patriotism bought and paid for is not patriotism." Easy for him to say; he wasn't a veteran. Neither was Herbert Hoover, who ordered the attack on the camp.

"So here are guys, who can't stay in the military, and can't return to their civilian jobs. They have that warrior ethos – some have actually said 'I don't want to disobey orders' when I've tried to get them better benefits -- just so they don't slip out of the middle-class life they had before they got injured.

"I think the military takes advantage of their warrior ethos. They (the wounded) are afraid to say 'I'm more screwed up than you say I am.' To them it's weakness. So somebody has to fight for them."
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