A 'Hard-Boiled Order': The Reeducation of Disabled WWI Veterans in New York City (World war I‪)‬

Upon discharge, most veterans of the American Expeditionary Force received $60, a new suit of clothes, a train ticket home, and the opportunity to purchase a modest life insurance policy. Unless they had been wounded, women serving as nurses and assistants in World War I more often than not received nothing. (1) The United States government, however, intended to repay its debt to soldiers disabled during the war by providing free vocational reeducation. As a group, veterans have been able to make effective claims on the resources of the federal government. Indeed, the pensions granted to veterans of the Union army and their dependents after the Civil War represent the first major form of federal public assistance in the United States. (2) The claims of disabled veterans have been even more powerful. After the Civil War, for example, the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers (NHDVS) garnered even more political support than popular pension legislation providing benefits to all veterans. As Jennifer Keene has demonstrated, the process of conscription during the First World War further encouraged soldiers to view their military service as a mutually-binding covenant with the state. During the war and its aftermath, able-bodied and wounded soldiers alike demanded that military officials respect their input in matters of training, discipline, and demobilization. Because of this sense of political entitlement, Keene refers to the Doughboys of World War One as "citizen solders." (3)