I was looking at this chart I found, that shows the year end returns of different investment types over the past several years.
In years where there was a significant decline in the stock market, while it is true that bonds sometimes did better than straight cash, overall it seems like bonds often take a hit (negative returns), while cash is at least safe from those negative returns.
So the question is… why bonds? Why not cash?
Chart: https://www.callan.com/periodic-table/