HEROES: B. E. F.'s End

• Share

(2 of 2)

Last to occupy the camp were some 800 Easterners, insistent upon first-class rail transportation which the B. & O. refused to supply. David Barry, president of the First National Bank, Harry Tredennick of Haws Refractories Co. and Louis Richard Custer, manager of Mr. Schwab's Bethlehem Steel plant joined secretly with Chamber of Commerce officials to speed their departure. The Pennsylvania would move them to Jersey City for $3,500. The county commissioners and city council put up $2,000. Mr. Barry spent a,whole morning begging subscriptions over the telephone from other business men until the fund was raised. Mayor McCloskey went out to the camp to announce the eastbound train was ready. "Don't let none of your leaders tell you they got any of these trains," bawled the stocky, red-faced pants presser. "What the hell? God did it. Don't let none of us take the credit."

After burning Herbert Hoover and An drew Mellon in effigy, the stragglers were shoved into the waiting coaches. They cheered as the train pulled out. Johnstown citizens cheered even louder for the B. E. F., as a national unit of restless, jobless men, was no more.

¶ In a Washington hospital last week died Eric Carlson of Oakland, Calif., one of the two veterans wounded when William Hushka was shot to death by police. In 18 months overseas service, he had been gassed and shellshocked. He was buried with full military honors in Arlington Cemetery.

¶ President Hoover wrote an American Legion Post in Boston that it was his "impression" that "less than half of them [B. E. F. members] ever served under the American flag."

¶ Veterans' Administrator Hines revealed that 94% of the B. E. F. had Army or Navy records, that two-thirds of them had served overseas, that about 20% of them were drawing Federal disability compensation or allowance. C To stem "apparently deliberate propaganda and misrepresentations" about the Army's expulsion of the B. E. F.. Secretary of War Hurley issued a broadside in which he: i) declared 33% of the B. E. F. were not veterans; 2) charged "Red agitators" with "a definite organized attack of several thousand men upon the police"; 3) denied that B. E. F. billets had been fired by his troops; 4) insisted the military operations had been executed with "unparalleled humanity and kindness."

¶ Every Red suspect held in connection with the police riot which led to calling out the Army was released by Washington officials for lack of evidence of participation in what Secretary Hurley called a "definite organized attack."