<Tr> <Th_colspan="2"> Casualties and losses </Th> </Tr> <Tr> <Td> First day 2 dead; 1,017 injured, total unknown </Td> <Td> At least 69 police injured </Td> </Tr> <P> Bonus Army was the popular name for an assemblage of some 43,000 marchers--17,000 U.S. World War I veterans, their families, and affiliated groups--who gathered in Washington, D.C. in the summer of 1932 to demand cash - payment redemption of their service certificates . Organizers called the demonstrators the "Bonus Expeditionary Force", to echo the name of World War I's American Expeditionary Forces, while the media referred to them as the "Bonus Army" or "Bonus Marchers". The contingent was led by Walter W. Waters, a former sergeant . </P> <P> Many of the war veterans had been out of work since the beginning of the Great Depression . The World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924 had awarded them bonuses in the form of certificates they could not redeem until 1945 . Each service certificate, issued to a qualified veteran soldier, bore a face value equal to the soldier's promised payment plus compound interest . The principal demand of the Bonus Army was the immediate cash payment of their certificates . </P>

The members of the bonus army who gathered in washington d.c. in june and july 1932 were there to