By EDWARD JOHNSON, Master Sergeant, US Army, Retired

On Sept. 21-23, 2009, members of the Uniformed Services Disabled Retirees (USDR) will convene in Las Cruces, N.M., to decide the future of their 28-year-old organization.

The USDR was founded in 1981 by six disabled military retirees from the State of New Mexico, to repeal an unjust law enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1944, known as Public Law 78-314 (Title 38 USC, Sections 5304 and 5305).

The law had prevented career military retirees from receiving their earned retirement annuity entitlement if they were disabled during military service and received a VA compensation for their disability.

Ironically, this unjust law was passed only 12 years after the infamous “Bonus Army March” on Washington, D.C. In summer 1932, in the depths of the first Great Depression, some 45,000 World War I veterans (Bonus Army) descended on Washington, D.C., to demand immediate payment of a cash bonus promised them eight years earlier for their war-time service.

Despite their efforts, the Bonus Bill was defeated in the Senate after passage in the House. Consequently, then Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur, under orders from President Hoover, drove the Bonus Army out of Washington, D.C., on July 28, 1932. Douglas used active duty soldiers wielding bayonet-tipped rifles, tanks, cavalry with drawn sabers and tear gas. Never before or since has our government used such an array of armament against its own citizens.

In greater contrast, the USDR members, disabled military retirees from subsequent wars, will return to its founding state to decide the future of the organization. After fighting a similar battle with the U.S. Congress for over 28 years, they are battle weary of fighting with legislators and/or their staff, making phone calls and sending e-mails.

Tony Nathe, the current USDR President, will drive from Sauk Rapids, Minn., to Las Cruces to attend the event. “Even though our entitlements were earned through a lifetime career in the U.S. military, promises made by military recruiters and career counselors are continually broken by politicians who have come and gone,” Nathe said. In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case and told the six New Mexico disabled retirees: “Congress made the law, Congress can change the law.”

However, the Congress continues to deny some decent, hard working, disabled military heroes their earned retirement.

There will be no “tent city” where thousands of veterans were camped out in Washington, nor millions of compassionate citizens calling upon the Congress to immediately repeal this unjust law. Just a small meeting room, in an American Legion post, the remnants of “A New Bonus Army” will decide on their best course of action. How will they continue their fight for justice began in 1981 by their New Mexico predecessors? Maybe they will plant the seeds for a new Bonus Army March on Washington, D.C.?

For more information on joining USDR or to register for the 27th annual

meeting of the USDR, visit http://usdr.org.

Federal Way resident Edward Johnson, Master Sergeant, US Army, Retired