Fleta
Campbell Springer was born
in
Blaine County,
Oklahoma.
From an article by Fleta Campbell Springer in
Harper's
Monthly
Magazine,
November, 1932.
The veterans were so orderly, so quiet, so
well-governed
without
government
that the city was amazed by it
as by a strange
phenomenon.The small
group of
Communist veterans (they at
no time mustered more
than 210 men for their
demonstrations),
segregated from the
beginning but always
making speeches,
scoffed at their
comrades for their
docility. They shouted
"Program! Action!"
And the loyal
veterans,
determined
that they
would be guilty of no overt act,
determined to offer
only passive resistance
to the
still
more
passive foe with
whom
they could
not come to grips,
expended all
their latent energy against
these Reds.
Their
own
"military
police," armed with sticks instead of guns,
were
constantly on the watch. They ran out
the
Reds.
They took
radical speechmakers
to the District line,
and beat them
up. The radicals came
back. Glassford
ordered the
veterans
to
desist from these violations of civil
law, warned them
against "taking the law
into their own hands," and
advised
complaining
radicals
to place
their charges with the
proper
authorities. The Bonus Army
leaders
muttered
their
resentment at
this
strict hewing to the
line. Commander Waters,
stung to bravado,
said, "To hell with Glassford!"
and
proceeded to try
to starve
out the Reds by refusing
radical groups food.
This move Glassford also
blocked.
Food,
he said, coming in to the
general commissary
was to
be distributed to all
groups alike, except
such food as
came in marked for delivery to
specific
units. John
Pace, the
leader of
the
Communists, applied for a permit to
hold a meeting in the
ball park adjoining the big
Anacostia camp.
Glassford
granted them
permit over Waters
protest that his men
"would tear Pace limb from
limb."
Glassford was
on
hand.
A fist fight
started. Glassford waded in and
stopped it,
cooled them down. "We're all
veterans
together, and I did not want
to see any veterans fighting
veterans. That man has a right to speak and
express
his
views. Any one
of you
who doesn't want to listen to him had better
go back
to camp and play
baseball."
(In the early afternoon of July 23)
General Glassford returned to the "riot area." All was
quiet,
and in control
of the police. Half an
hour later
Commissioners
Reichelderfer and
Crosby
appeared, and General Glassford
informed them that all was quiet and that
plans
were being
formulated to get
all
the veterans
visiting in the area to return to
their own
camps. Nothing was said by the
Commissioners
at
this
time to
indicate
that they had reached a
decision to
call for
Federal aid. It was not
until more
than an hour
later
that he
had any
intimation that the troops had been called
out. Information came
to him first from a
newspaper
reporter and
was
confirmed a
few minutes later by a
message from Attorney
General Mitchell. "I was,"
said
Glassford,
"in command at the scene of
a
difficult
situation
vitally affected by
the call for Federal
troops.
I have never
been informed why the
Commissioners
did not
notify me instantly
when the troops were
called."
