Today is Veteran’s Day, formerly Armistice Day, the 11th day of November, the day the armistice was signed in 1918.
Walt Disney was sixteen and officially underage but somehow managed to make his way to France in 1918 as a Red Cross Ambulance Corps driver. Although he didn’t see much of the fighting, he still ferried wounded soldiers from the front to the hospital and also around Paris after the war ended.
Young Walt drew animated figures on the inside and outside of ambulances. It made soldiers and everybody else happy. And that’s how he got his start. His scrapbook of sketches during the war included a cartoon “trench rat” that perhaps gave rise to the famous mouse we all now know.
(Photo: Harris & Ewing, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
*Editor’s note: This post was updated with new images and links on September 27, 2025.