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OLD PHOTO - Walt Disney Red Cross Ambulance driver WW1 1919
Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2021 9:15 am
by Jay In Northern Ca.
Re: OLD PHOTO - Walt Disney Red Cross Ambulance driver WW1 1919
Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2021 10:01 am
by Quickm007
Really cool, thank you sharing this
Re: OLD PHOTO - Walt Disney Red Cross Ambulance driver WW1 1919
Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2021 12:53 pm
by Erik Johnson
Walt Disney drove a Red Cross ambulance in France, after the war was over. There was still a great demand for ambulance drivers.
His brother Roy enlisted in the Navy in the summer of 1917. Walt dreamed of enlisting but he was underage. He found out that Red Cross ambulance drivers had to be at least 17 years old. At age 16 his mother allowed him to falsify his age as 17 on the application (this would have been sometime during 1918 as Walt Disney was born in December 1901).
He was sent to a staging post at Sound Beach, CT but the Armistice was signed while he was still in the U.S. Eventually, he did wind up in France and returned to the U.S. sometime in 1919.
You can read about this in the book The Art of Walt Disney. Not much detail is provided, but I consider it a reliable source.
Re: OLD PHOTO - Walt Disney Red Cross Ambulance driver WW1 1919
Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2021 1:34 pm
by Rich Eagle
What a guy Walt was. So many magical things.
Thanks for the details of this.
Rich