Walt Disney in World War I

                                     Video courtesy of the Walt Disney Family Museum


Today marks Walt Disney's 111th birthday. Before Walt Disney began his career as an animator, he was one of the many Missourians who participated in the Great War through the American Red Cross Ambulance Service. This week, project staff sat down for an interview with Walt Disney biographer, Steven Watts, to learn more about how Disney's experiences in the Great War shaped his later life.

Young Disney in uniform, courtesy of Dan Viets

Walter Elias Disney was born in Chicago in 1901.  In 1906, Disney and his family moved to a farm near Marceline, Missouri where he created some of the fondest memories of his childhood.  In 1911, Disney's family moved again, this time to Kansas City, where Disney attended his first few years of high school. When America entered the Great War in 1917,  Disney's older brothers enlisted in the service (see Roy and Raymond Disney's soldier records here). Sixteen year old Walt tried to enlist in the Navy too, but he was denied  because the Navy had closed recruiting.

Determined to do his part, Disney joined The American Red Cross Ambulance Service just two weeks before Armistice. In the above video, Disney describes how he lied about his age and convinced his parents to let him enlist.

The enormous scale of World War I meant that the need for medical support was staggering.  To meet the needs of the war, the U.S. Army's surgeon general dramatically expanded the Army Medical Department and encouraged volunteer organizations to participate. Volunteer ambulance units, through organizations such as the American Red Cross Ambulance Service and American Field Service, recruited volunteers to transport supplies and troops. The volunteers usually were not provided with uniforms, wages, or equipment, and had to provide their own transportation overseas. The work was frequently dangerous and involved transporting wounded soldiers offsite in the midst of battle. Despite those disadvantages, many Missourians volunteered as ambulance drivers in the spirit of patriotism and adventure.

The National WWI Museum's Model T Ford ambulance

Disney did not leave the United States until after the war had ended, so he did not experience the atrocities and dangers that most ambulance drivers faced during the war. He was assigned to Evacuation Hospital Number Five in Paris, where his duties included being a driver and mechanic for Red Cross supply trucks and ambulances and providing taxi service for army officers.  He later served at Red Cross canteen in the French countryside, then became a guide for visiting dignitaries that he chauffeured through France and Germany.

16 year old Disney next to an ambulance he illustrated

Despite being kept busy by his duties, Disney found time to develop his art skills.  He decorated ambulances (with cartoons not camouflage), drew war related cartoons that were submitted to his high school newspaper and leading humor magazines Life and Judge.  He also illustrated posters for the Red Cross and drew sketches for his friends.

Disney's entrepreneurial sense shined through during his time in the Red Cross. Wanting to take advantage of the market for war artifacts, he and a friend got their hands on a supply of German helmets. Disney painted them with phony camouflage and his friend shot them full of bullet holes. After rubbing them with dirt and denting them with rocks, Disney and his friend sold these helmets as "genuine" relics.  Disney also painted decorations on his comrades jackets for ten francs a job.

Over There: Missouri in the Great War project staff interviewed Steven Watts, the author of Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life to gain insight into how Disney's time with the Red Cross Ambulance Service impacted him later in life.

Why do you think Walt was so eager to drop out of school and join the war effort? 

Steven Watts:  His older brother Roy, who he was very close to, had joined the war. Patriotism was another reason. Young men then were patriotic in an old fashioned sort of way. And Disney was a patriot throughout his life. He was ridiculed in the 1960s for being an old-fashioned patriot, but he remained one anyway. Another reason was a desire for adventure - Disney was restless, and eager to try and experience new things.  [Walt Disney's patriotism was made apparent again in WWII through Walt Disney Studio's propaganda production for the US Government.]

Do you think Walt's experiences in the Red Cross are alluded to in any of his films?

Steven Watts: Indirectly. There aren't any direct lines of connection, but it contributed to him developing as an artist. He led a sheltered Midwestern life up to that point.  War propelled him out of his comfortable life, threw him out into the world and broadened his horizons. He did things that he wouldn't have done at home, such as smoking cigarettes and playing cards. After ten months he returned and didn't want go back to high school.  The war had put him in touch with the wider world. It helped him grow as an artist.[Shortly after returning from the war, Walt chose to forgo the rest of his high school education and enroll in an art school in Kansas City to pursue a career in art.]

How else do you think that Walt's time in the Red Cross affected him? Did it have an impact on the kind of man he would become?

Steven Watts: It made him more worldy and less provincial. After serving in the war it is easier to imagine him pulling up roots and moving to California, which would have been frightening for a young man who had never left home before.

Steven Watts is a professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia, where he teaches courses in American intellectual and cultural history.  He is currently working on a biography about Dale Carnegie, entitled Self-Help Messiah: Dale Carnegie and Success in Modern America. Coincidentally, Dale Carnegie is also a Missourian who served in World War I.

Sources

Jolley, Laura R. "Walter Elias Disney" Historic Missourians. The State Historical Society of Missouri. Online. 29 Nov 2012.

"About Walt Disney."  The Walt Disney Family Museum. Online. 29 Nov. 2012.

Watts, Steven. The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. 2001.

World War I Ambulance Service. The US Army Medical Department, Office of Medical History. Online. 29 Nov. 2012.