THE VFW v THE AMERICAN LEGION

     My dad was a lifetime member of the VFW. This was not an honor based on longevity, he paid higher yearly dues to gain that distinction. He did that because he believed in the organization and its goals. Consequently, the monthly VFW magazine was among the magazines available to me to read as a child. Many's the time a traveling veteran joined us at the dinner table. Many's the time that dad would call the VFW secretary-treasurer, on the old bake-light rotary-dial telephones of the 50s and 60s.  Pretty soon the doorbell would ring, dad would answer the door and then they, and the down-on-his-luck veteran, would stand on the porch. Dad and our guest would return to the table, they would finish their meal, including dessert and coffee. Lousy coffee, I would learn many years later. When the veteran left, he had some traveling cash for food and gas. That's the way things were done in those days. I suppose the American Legion worked the same way. Dad had a good friend named Paul Boomer. Paul was both a Baptist minister and an officer in the American Legion. Sometimes dad and Paul would represent the two bodies on Memorial day or other important occasions, Dad's khaki dress cap with its VFW logo, and past adjutant-general in gold thread, and Paul's red-white-and-blue Legion cap with ribbons and do-dads. Dad had another friend from his VFW chapter, a Philipines War vet, who was a Kooty. Fred Schwingler had this crazy campaign cap with this goofy plastic arachnid looking critter. They would go to veteran's hospitals to cheer up their brothers, and help them through their hospitalization. The Kooty represented the bed bugs endemic in veteran's hospitals at an earlier time.

    

   I asked dad once what was the difference  between VFW and American Legion. "The Veteran's of Foreign Wars represented veteran's who had fought in foreign wars", he said. The Legion accepted veteran's whether they had fought overseas or not. All of our wars were overseas in that day, and before, Vietnam, mostly. Maybe there were some veterans in some secret place in South America or Africa, but those were veteran's who had secrets to keep. Anyway, my adolescent mind saw the defect in that statement. 

     

I never thought much of that time except as a pleasant memory, until I read The Plot to Seize the Whitehouse, published a decade or so ago. The book by Jules Archer describes an actual plan to seize control of the government and hold the newly sworn-in President Roosevelt hostage. This was in 1933, some 90 years ago. And the stink of its return is in the air, like Donald Trump's farts lingering in the courtroom where his trial in New York City for paying hush money was held. The more important trials of withholding sensitive documents which he could have compromised, or for trying to take control of our electoral process, because he lost, have been suspiciously put on a back-burner until the new president, should it be Trump, could bury it. Oh right, I was talking about the American Legion. That book got me to wonder what my dad, as a young man released from service in a victorious war would have thought, having heard tidbits of the follwing story.

     

A two-time Medal of Honor winner with the imposing name of Smedley Darlington Butler, led the American Legion in the 1930s. I don't know if he was an officer in the Legion or if he just had some pull, but it doesn't matter. He was approached by some wealthy businessmen representing banking, weapons manufacturing, and petroleum companies. Tell me if this sounds familiar. Their plan, as they had carefully plotted it, was to seize President Roosevelt and hold him hostage. Now that that unpleasant business was out of the way, they-this sinister capitalist combine, could go about taking over the government, Smedley Butler was to be the titular head. When needed, President Roosevelt could sign a document or be brought out for ceremonial occasions. What could possibly go wrong? 

     

Smedley Darlington Butler, two-time Medal of Honor winner, for the Philipine war and WWI, author of two books, War is a Racket, and Gangsters of Capitolism, a graduate of the University of Nobody's Fool, was to be at the lead of his beloved American Legion. What could possibly go wrong. When the meeting had ended he promised to be in touch and they left, no doubt rubbing their hands in a cartoonish way.

Col. Butler met with a Senator and revealed the narration of a few days earlier. However there were no written documents, no tape recordings, just the words of a two-time Medal of Honor winner, against three businessmen who probably inherited grandpa's business, definitely not diversity hires. The names of the three plotters are not known, though they can be speculated. President Roosevelt went on to pull the country out of the Great Depression, build hydro-electric generation from Tennessee to the Columbia River, help the mid-west during the Dust Bowl, pass the New Deal, win a war against fascism and imperialism and die a hero to the nation in his 4th term of office. 

I think you can guess what the other party did. 

Hint: same book of plays that you see today. What could possibly go wrong?