Walt Disney talks about some of the ways he earned pocket change while in France, making use of his budding artistic talents.

When he wasn’t busy doing odd jobs, Walt put his creative talent to use designing canteen posters touting the “hot chocolate they had for the troop trains, and the shower baths”, as well as humorous illustrations for his coworkers. The budding artist remarked:

I used to do special things for the guys. They’d say, “Look, I want to send one to my girl. Will you make one of this and that,” and I used to try and draw the caricature of the guy to send home. I’d pick up money that way. I made money decorating…anything they wanted decorated, you know? I had pictures all over…I put little [pictures] on my cammie [camouflage] net on this truck. I found out that the inside and outside of an ambulance is as good a place to draw as any. I had a doughboy I used in a lot of these cartoons I tried to sell to Life. I had this doughboy with this beanie face and he was on one side [of the ambulance].

The enterprising youngster then started painting faux medals on jackets and camouflage patterns on footlockers:

We all wore leather windbreaks…[with] no sleeves. There was a Frenchman who took care of our barracks. He had a Croix de Guerre. I asked him, “Can I borrow it for a day?” He said, “Alright.” I painted on my jacket a Croix de Guerre…just as a gag.

The Croix de Guerre, created by the French government in April 1915, was awarded to the “bravest soldiers on the battlefield after each case” by his commanding officer. Disney said when other men saw what he had done, they wanted a copy of the medal painted on their jackets as well.

Then the guys said, “Hey, Diz, paint me one of those, will yah?” So, every one of us was going around that barracks, all of us with a Croix de Guerre. You’d see somebody coming down the street ten feet away [and] you’d swear he had a Croix de Guerre on. You got up [to] it [and it] was a painted one. They liked them. I used to get ten Francs for the darned things.

Besides painting fake medals on jackets, Walt also painted his foot locker.

I was fooling around one day with my foot locker and I camouflaged it. [I] put different colors on it. The guys loved it and everybody wanted [their foot locker] camouflaged.

After watching him paint his foot locker, a co-worker known only by the nickname the “Georgia Cracker” approached Disney and asked him to paint a specific camouflage scheme on a German helmet. Satisfied with Walt’s work, the Cracker proposed forming a partnership. Disney agreed, and the two young men combined their talents to create and sell doctored souvenirs to unsuspecting soldiers looking for a memento of their time overseas. Walt remembered that first meeting with the Cracker:

So, this kid came up to me and…he said, “Paint me a camouflaged helmet”. He had a [genuine] sniper’s helmet. I copied the sniper’s helmet. He said, “Make it look old.” I got some of this quick drier so that when I painted…it would crack. He took [the helmet] out and banged it in the dirt…and then he came back. I think he gave me five francs, or ten francs. Then he had me painting them on a regular order. And before I knew it he had them laid out in the sun. And then one day he went out and he was shooting holes in them. And he even got hair…and he’d put the hair in the hole.

The Cracker took the doctored helmets and sold them to unsuspecting, souvenir-hungry soldiers passing through. As Walt recalled:

These troop trains would come through and all the soldiers would…spill out. They were replacements…going on up into Germany. Neufchâteau…was on the line running on up to Nancy into Germany. They’d be around there for an hour, an hour-and-a-half because the French would change engines.

This allowed time for the Cracker to pedal his doctored wares to unsuspecting buyers. The enterprising fellow knew the troop train schedules and always seemed to be at the depot when the trains pulled in. The supposedly “rare” sniper helmets were the big draw for the troops.

They all wanted those helmets. He started a little racket. [H]e knew every troop train coming…he’d go over there with a whole armful of helmets. German helmets. Now these kids…they’d come right off the boat. They were…going on up into Germany. They hadn’t seen a battlefield or anything. “Souvenirs!” He’d sell these helmets. They all fought over that sniper’s [helmet]. He always had [lots of] the other [helmets] but he only had one [sniper’s helmet] for every troop train. He never had more than one hanging on his arm.

Walt was fascinated by the activities that happened when the troop trains pulled into the station:

More things happened around that troop [train]. It was a very interesting thing when those troop trains would come through. They had…little games…crap games…loaded dice, and everything else.

To meet the seemingly never-ending demand for war relics, Disney and the Cracker often went on treasure hunts, scouring the surrounding countryside in search of discarded helmets, weapons, and other saleable war-related items. Walt said:

We used to drive up…through ammunition dumps…[Cracker] would go pick-up as many helmets as [he] could pick up. The helmets were the thing.

Earning money through the sale of souvenirs wasn’t Walt’s only source of extra income. Servicemen with idle time on their hands often engaged in a game of cards or dice hoping to acquire some extra spending money for their next furlough. And while he wasn’t much of a gambler, he took part in a craps game one evening that provided a tidy windfall:

One night this crap game started. I was more-or-less an amateur at it. I innocently got in the crap game. And there [were] two fellas that had come through, just staying overnight. They were going somewhere. And this one guy wanted the game. Nobody wanted the game. So they got it started and I got in it…and I ended-up cleaning him. And all the guys were making a pile on me. I was hot as a pistol. They took this guy to the cleaners and I ended up with 1,800 francs. Well, that was a lot of money then…over 300 dollars.

Course, a lot of the guys there’d lost a little. This fellow then was broke and he wanted to begin to borrow and things and nope, that was the rule we had, you know? It’s almost like table stakes. It’s what you had in your pocket. So the game ended. [T]he next day I went right down, there was an American Express [office] set up there…in town. I went down and I sent darned near all of it home plus I sent some money to my sister to buy her a watch.

Continued in "In the Service of the Red Cross"!

Walt remembers how wine and potholes make for a lot of broken eggs.

As the canteen’s driver and errand boy, Disney was often sent out into the countryside to perform low-level errands. One such trip entailed a journey to purchase fresh eggs. Walt related the humorous tale of having to traverse back country roads pitted with potholes in order to reach a local farmhouse:

I went…one time [to] this little place where we’d get the eggs. The family was friendly. I remember…filling this great big basket full of eggs…and of course…I’d drink a little wine. Well, one time I came back and I’d hit too many [pot]holes and there were too many broken eggs. So the next time they sent me down to get eggs, they sent this MP [Military Police] sergeant along with me…Sergeant Smitty, he was kind of a fat fella and full of fun.

On the way to the farmhouse to fetch the next order of eggs, Disney asked Smitty why he was along for the ride:

We were bouncing all over…[and Smitty] said, “I’m supposed to see that you don’t get anything to drink so the eggs are not all broken.”

So we got down there and this French family, [they] were so friendly—it was a wonderful French farmyard, [with] peacocks, you know? It was a wonderful place [where] we got these wonderful eggs. While they’re filling the basket with eggs, well [they asked us if we’d] come in and have a little wine. “No,” Smitty says, “no, we can’t have any.” You know [what]? Pretty soon Smitty was having a little. It finally ended up that Smitty got plastered [laughter].

So we drove back. Smitty sat in the front seat and he was so plastered, holding the whole basket of eggs, and we got back to the canteen we hadn’t broken any. Smitty was holding them in his lap.

Continued in "In the Service of the Red Cross"!