Chapter Eleven
As the war bug in America in support of the conflict raging in Europe continued to spread across the country, young Walter Disney quickly caught the fever. Propaganda explained that in order to stop the German Kaiser and the kultur he was trying to spread across the Atlantic, young men needed to enlist and it was their patriotic duty to do so. Unfortunately, the minimum enlistment age was 17, and the enthusiastic Walter was one year short.
The school year began at McKinley High, but the young man’s attentions were elsewhere. Walter’s dreams of serving his country grew, but quickly becoming frustrated due to the age requirement, he attempted to find other ways to help out. It was during this time that he poured himself into The McKinley Voice, creating his own propaganda cartoons for his column, The Tiny Voice. As inspiration, the budding artist kept a list of visual jokes called a ‘gag file’ from which to pull to insert into his cartoons; many of these visual gags had been inspired by the scores of vaudeville shows and silent films he had seen during his free afternoons in downtown Chicago. In order to test whether his gags would get laughs in his column, Walter realised that he needed to try them out on someone whose sense of humour was lacking: his father. Careful with how he approached these gag tests with Elias due to his distaste over his son’s love of art, Walter would casually bring up a hypothetical situation or tell his father a joke in passing. True to his character, the ever-serious Elias wouldn’t flag any facial emotions, just nod at his son, and offer a nondescript compliment: “That’s nice, Walter.” On rare instances, a few days later, the strict and serious patriarch would approach his youngest son while still maintaining a serious demeanour. “I’ve been thinking about that joke you told me the other day,” he would explain. “It’s funny, Walter. Very funny.” This reaction told him that, while unable to break the stoic façade of his father, the gag would likely cause his classmates to cackle in response. But even taking a humorous spin on the war overseas didn’t satisfy the convictions he had to join up.
As the uneventful school year came to a close, Walter once again continued his occasional jobs at O-Zell and acquired a job as a postal carrier, following in his father’s footsteps once more. While working at the Chicago Post Office, Walter had a number of different tasks to accomplish on any given day. Officially holding the position as ‘sub carrier’, he filled in by picking up and delivering mail if the regular postmen were out sick. On any given day, he and his fellow postmen would walk three or four different routes through downtown Chicago. On some occasions, Walter was able to use a horse and buggy, which allowed him an easier time of collecting large amounts of envelopes and packages. One particular horse had been trained by senior postmen to walk the route and stop at predetermined locations. Walter was instructed not to touch the reins, but rather let the horse carry him along the route. It took a while for him to learn the horse’s ways: on numerous instances, after loading several letters and packages into the back of the buggy, the horse would begin its walk to the next stop, leaving the exasperated Walter standing on the curb. Because it had been trained not to respond to verbal commands, Walter often had to try to launch himself into the moving cart or follow until the next pickup location when he knew the horse would stop. Unfortunately, after loading more mail into the back of the buggy, the whole charade would begin again. It didn’t take long for him to realise that the sound of the slamming buggy door was the horse’s cue to begin towards the next stop; from then on, he quietly closed the door before hopping into the cart.
On one particularly frustrating day, while collecting mail from the hotels along Chicago’s Grand Avenue, Walter emerged from the lobby of a building, his arms full of envelopes, to find that the horse and buggy were no longer parked on the curb where he had left them. Running into the middle of the street, he looked up and down the road, but the scores of horses, buggies, trams, and motorcars made it difficult to find the postal vehicle. Remembering that the horse had the route memorised, the panicked postal carrier began to run down the pavement, careful not to drop any of the letters he was carrying. He turned down a side street and then another that ran parallel to Grand Avenue, where he found the horse waiting for him on the opposite side of the hotel building; evidently it had been trained to go around the block and wait for the postal carrier on the other side of the lobby, cutting precious time along the postal route.
Walter’s route also took him to the Grand Avenue Pier (today’s Navy Pier), the terminal from which tourists could embark on a steamship across Lake Michigan, as well as a port for cargo being imported and exported from the lakeside city to other parts of the country. The 1,000-metre pier was a new addition to the city; originally opened a couple of years before in 1916, the Grand Avenue Pier also served as an outdoor recreation space, as well as the location for a jail for those who had dodged the American draft when the United States entered the First World War.
On one particular day, after collecting postcards from the mailboxes along the pier, Walter boarded a tram back to the post office, his mailbag hanging on his back. It was a beautiful day and he enjoyed admiring the people scurrying down the pavements, the variety of busy traffic on the streets, and the new towers being constructed, billed as some of the tallest in the world. The weather was beautiful and he decided that, with nothing else to do on this Sunday afternoon, he would pick up an additional route collecting letters around the city. Upon arriving back at the post office, he hung his bag of postcards on a peg in the horse barn and took out the buggy that was already hooked up to his favourite horse to fulfil the route.
A few weeks later, Walter was sitting in the mailroom sorting mail for delivery, he and his buddies cracking jokes with each other. Suddenly, he noticed it had become strangely quiet and his cohorts were no longer laughing. He looked up from his pile of envelopes and realised everyone’s faces had become solemn, almost a mix between surprise and fear – and they were all looking at him.
“Disney!” came a voice from behind him. Walter started. He turned around to find two tough-looking postal inspectors standing behind him.
“That’s me,” the young man squeaked meekly.
“Come on with us,” they ordered. Walter stood up from his chair and threw a sidelong glance at his friends as he was whisked away. As he walked toward a nearby office, his mind raced, trying to determine what he had done wrong. Had something happened to the delivery horse? Had he accidentally delivered mail at the wrong address? Whatever it was, it must have been bad: these guys looked pretty serious.
After entering an office, one of the inspectors closed the door; both seated themselves on the opposite side of a table in the room from the young man who was now trying to hold his composure while being secretly terrified.
“A few weeks ago, you collected a bag of mail from the Grand Avenue Pier, correct?” one inspector asked.
“Yes, that’s correct,” answered the young postman.
“What did you do with it?”
“I put it in the mail chute,” Walter explained.
“No, you didn’t,” interjected the second officer, slapping his hand on the table. “What did you do with it? Come clean now, kid!”
Walter jumped. His rising panic made it more difficult to hide his fear. A whirlwind of thoughts sped through his mind. He remembered turning in the mail. What would his father think? Maybe he didn’t put the mail in the chute. And Roy? What would he think? He didn’t need to worry about his kid brother in jail for mail fraud. As he looked down at his feet, they began to move in a circular motion, but it wasn’t because he was moving them – the room had begun spinning.
“Well, we’ll tell you what you did with the bag of postcards, Disney,” came the voice of the first postal inspector seemingly from a distance. “You hung it on a peg in the horse stable and it’s been hanging there for two weeks.” The room became silent and stopped spinning. The cold feeling in the young man’s chest dissipated as his stomach returned to its normal place. He slowly looked up at the two officers sitting across from him. Both had smirks on their faces.
“That’s right,” replied Walter in a small voice. “That’s exactly what happened.” The memory of the beautiful Sunday afternoon and the tram ride back from the Grand Avenue Pier came flooding back to him.
“Be more careful with the mail from now on, kid,” said one of the inspectors, standing up and opening the door. “Get out of here.”
It took everything for Walter to not stand up and bolt out of the small office. Holding his composure, he slowly left the room and walked back down the hallway to his work station, resisting the urge to find a waste basket to vomit into; he could feel the eyes of the postal inspectors on the back of his head as he walked back into the sorting room. Finding his place at his workstation, he slowly sat down; his co-workers silently continued sorting the mail as though they hadn’t noticed his return. When he glanced up at them a few seconds later, he met their sideways looks and locked gazes with them, meeting their wide, questioning eyes with a smirk that was characteristic of Walter Disney’s sense of humour. This smirk broke the tension and their day of work and jokes continued as it had before the interrogation had begun.
Unfortunately for the young postman, working for the Chicago Post Office was filled with even more drama, some of which became fatal. On the afternoon of Wednesday, 4 September 1918, Walter had just returned from his route to the post office, which was located in downtown Chicago’s Federal Building. After dropping off his mail bag shortly after 3 pm, he exited the post office located just off the rotunda of the Federal Building. As he walked across the polished marble floor of the lobby, an explosion shook the building accompanied by a loud FOOOOOM. Dust shot out, filling the room, from the direction of the West Adams Street entrance. A few seconds later, a dazed Walter found himself standing up after being knocked to the ground by the blast. Looking around, he noticed others who had been crossing the rotunda doing the same. Walter was confused in noting that a woman who had been walking nearby who had been wearing a white dress was now wearing black; later he realised that her dress had been coloured by the dust and smoke from the explosion.
Screams seemed to echo from all around, magnified by the curve of the eight-floor dome that capped the lobby. Another young man was helping an elderly woman off the floor, her spectacles glassless as they hung crooked from her ears. Across the lobby, a heavyset woman was screaming that she had ‘lost all her money’. Scattered across the now dust-covered floor were tattered pieces of cloth including sections of skirts and blouses.
Hundreds of people began running towards the doors, as well as the now-gaping hole where the West Adams Street entrance had been. The mass of humanity quickly came to a halt, as on- and off-duty police officers blockaded the exits and locked the doors in an effort to find those responsible for the explosion. Inserting himself in line, Walter, trying to keep his composure, waited his turn to exit the building. After a brief exchange with the officers standing outside the building, he stumbled over the piles of bricks and shattered wood into the street. Walking away from the building, he barely noticed the sound of crunching glass beneath his feet as he made his way to the pavement across from the Federal Building. As his nerves began to calm, he noticed how the shards of glass seemed almost to cover the street and pavements, as the strong explosion had broken windows as high as five stories on either side of West Adams Street. The propaganda posters encouraging Americans to purchase war bonds and enlist in the military hung from the sides of the building in shreds, flapping in the breeze created by people running from the scene.
Things outside the Federal Building were more chaotic than inside. Screams from both men and women filled the air. Stunned people sat on the ground or were stretched out in the street. A priest, clad in black, was moving amongst the bodies, tending to the injured and administering last rites to the dead and dying. The body of a young woman lay near the Federal Building, with half of her head blown off. Those nearby were horrified to see that she was still breathing and even more horrified to experience the next few minutes as her breathing became shallower and eventually stopped. The sound of heavy cloth being dragged across the pavement underscored the wailing that filled the streets, as a number of eyes turned to the destroyed entrance of the building. A man was dragging a body clad in a shredded postal worker’s uniform down the steps; the unnatural movement of the body led many to believe that every bone had been shattered. Walter was devastated to learn later that this slaughtered individual was William Wheeler, a 45-year-old colleague who delivered mail like him. The sound of brisk horses’ hooves clopped down the road as eyes turned to the noise. A lone mail horse was stumbling down the middle of West Adams Street towards a policeman who was surveying the carnage. In an effort to stop the horse from running away, he grabbed the horse by the bit. Blood ran down the side of the horse’s face, its eyes wide in terror. Upon stopping the crazed animal, the policeman and others nearby watched as it sank to the ground and died.
The clanging of ambulance bells could be heard in the distance as medical help approached. Hope rose for those standing in the destruction surrounding the Federal Building, but this hope ceased as the sound of a crash ended the ambulance bells. It was later learned that the ambulance, which was rushing to the scene of the explosion, had crashed into the rear of a tram that had stopped for the ambulance to pass, injuring the two physicians and two patrolmen on board.
Finally able to gather himself together to make his way home, Walter glanced at the clock that was mounted to the corner of the Federal Building. The explosion had stopped it to the exact minute of the blast: 3.12 pm. Upon arriving home, his mother and father expressed relief that he had escaped largely unscathed.
Over the course of the next few days, details about the explosion began to emerge. According to an article on page one of The Chicago Tribune, at around 3.00 pm on 4 September, an unnamed woman had just finished purchasing war stamps from the post office on the first floor of the Federal Building, located just inside the West Adams Street entrance. She noticed a man standing in the entrance with a cigar box under his arm, a piece of string hanging out from beneath the box’s cover. She claimed that he took the cigar he had been smoking and touched the burning end of it to the string, then dropped the box to the ground, kicking it beneath a nearby radiator, before exiting the building. Finding this odd but not disconcerting, she walked away from the entrance and across the lobby towards the Dearborn Street entrance of the building, when the explosion occurred. While her story was not corroborated by other witnesses, a number of other individuals reported seeing a rather short man, weighing approximately 65kg and wearing a fedora or Panama hat made of brown felt, sprinting out of the West Adams Street entrance and getting into a waiting car which sped away just before the explosion.
Eight floors above the scene of chaos, William D. ‘Big Bill’ Haywood was in a meeting with prosecutors, United States marshals, and officials of the U.S. Court of Appeals. Haywood was a founder and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (also known as the I.W.W. or ‘Wobblies’), a radical socialist-leaning labour union which advocated class warfare through strikes, boycotts, and industrial sabotage. Many of the tactics used by the I.W.W. were often violent and illegal, which led to numerous arrests. In 1917, Haywood and other leaders of the organisation were arrested when they dodged the American draft and encouraged a number of industrial workers in Chicago to refuse to work, which harmed the wartime industry supporting American troops overseas. Law enforcement agents of both the city of Chicago and the United States cited the American Espionage Act, which made it a crime for those inside the United States to hamper the war effort or aid any enemies of the United States, both internal and external.
On the day of the explosion in Chicago’s Federal Building, Haywood was upstairs meeting with representatives of the U.S. Court of Appeals asking for a release on bond from their 20-year sentence for those members of the I.W.W. arrested due to the Espionage Act. When the blast shook the building, all the individuals in the room were lifted out of their chairs or found themselves thrown to the ground. Thomas Dolan, a deputy marshal, was stunned to find Haywood still in his chair, tapping a pencil against the table and staring off into space, unperturbed.
“They’ve bombed the building!” shouted Dolan. Haywood’s private secretary, Ms Mary Service, ran to a nearby window and looked down at the road below. Dolan and another deputy marshal, Fred Klika, quickly stepped into the hall, summoning one of the guards that had accompanied Haywood that morning from the county jail, who was also picking himself up off the floor.
After instructing the guard to keep an eye on the I.W.W. leader, the two marshals gathered their colleagues and set into motion a plan to round up other members of the organisation’s leadership, convinced that the attack had come as a result of Haywood’s appeal plea. While Dolan and Klika were making their plan, Haywood brought his anxiety under control, explaining to the guard and Mary Service that the explosion wasn’t tied to the International Workers of the World.
“It might have been a German outrage,” he explained, suggesting that the explosion was an attack of America’s enemies in the great war happening overseas. “It’s a terrible thing. No I.W.W. follower would be as foolish as to do such a thing. I am convinced in my own mind that no man of the organisation had any connection with this outrage.”
Over the next few hours, top members of the I.W.W. leadership were captured. Raids were conducted on two headquarters for the organisation, arresting approximately 100 Wobblies. Numerous individuals were taken into custody based on circumstantial evidence of things in their possession. For instance, one suspect, James Connelly, was arrested and accused of being associated with the attacks because he was carrying a small lamp and some receipts from an explosives company in his pockets. Another young man, Kent Rudin, was arrested because he had been seen reading I.W.W. literature. As he was being searched at arrest, he was found to be carrying a rusted revolver, making him out to be seen as a ‘dangerous man’. However, out of all the people arrested ‘in connection’ with the attack on the Federal Building, none matched the description given by witnesses of the short man wearing the brown felt hat.
As the dust finally cleared away and clean-up commenced, it was announced that the explosion killed four: in addition to Walter’s colleague, William Wheeler, another postman named Edwin Kolkow, a young serviceman named Joseph Ladd, and the young woman with the head injury, Ella Miehlke, were all killed in the blast. The explosion injured seventy-five others in varying degrees, either from the shock of the blast, flying debris, or falling glass.
In an effort to protect ‘Big Bill’, he was spirited away down a service elevator to the ground floor, where, handcuffed and under heavy guard, he was loaded into a police wagon and driven to the county prison. In 1919, a woman in Milwaukee, Wisconsin accused her husband, Dominick Costerella, of carrying out the bombing on Chicago’s Federal Building, as well as an attack on the Milwaukee Police Station in 1917 that killed ten people. When police finally found Costerella, he was arrested in Pennsylvania on his wife’s charges. After learning of his arrest, his wife went to the police and admitted she had made up the story in an effort to locate her husband, who had left her and disappeared. Unfortunately, with the revelation that Mrs Costerella’s story was false, the investigation of the United States marshals and the Chicago Police came to a halt and, after some interrogations, most of those arrested in the raids on the I.W.W. headquarters were released. In 1921, after being released on bail during the appeal process, William Haywood fled the country to Russia, where he later died in 1928.
While working part-time at the post office, Walter became friends with a young man his age, Russell Maas. Like many other young men their age, Maas felt strongly about enlisting in the armed forces but was also frustrated by the minimum age requirement of 17. While American young men were able to join the Armed Forces at the age of 16 with parental consent, Walter knew that he would never get this from Elias and Flora: his father was especially bitter and frustrated with his older brothers Ray and Roy for participating in the war. Together, Maas and Walter began looking for a way around this obstacle.
Their first attempt was the United States Navy; Walter admired Roy so much that he was inspired to join the same branch that his older brother served in. Together, he and Maas went down to the recruiting station with the plan to fool the recruiters and doctors: Maas was tall and more mature-looking for a 16-year-old, and they reasoned that if they could convince the recruiters that he was old enough, maybe they would accept Walter too. Unfortunately, after conducting a physical examination of the boys, Maas was rejected because he wore glasses and it was determined that they were too young, and they were encouraged to return in a few months when they turned 17. The two boys were unable to follow through on the recommendation, however: shortly after their attempt, it was announced that the U.S. Navy had a sufficient number of men for the war and the recruiting office closed.
Recognising that they probably wouldn’t be able to fool the American armed forces into believing they were old enough, the two boys decided to investigate other organisations that would take younger boys who wanted to serve. Word soon came that the Canadian Army was accepting young men from the United States. They soon hatched a plan to head north to join up, plotting their escape for the near future. The two didn’t have enough foresight, though: in anticipation of their trip, Maas packed his suitcase early with essentials, leading his mother to question her son about the packed bag. When Mrs Maas found out about the boys’ plan to abandon their families, jobs, and education, she quickly called Flora Disney and filled her in, bringing the young patriots’ desire to join up to another halt.
With their plans to participate in the war seemingly at an end, Walter and Russell decided to pour their summer into their work at the post office. Soon, the school year began, and Walter once again began his work making commentary for The McKinley Voice and his column, filling in at the post office when he was available.
One afternoon, while he was sorting mail, he heard the sound of pounding feet as though a flurry of activity was heading towards him in the mail room. Looking up, he saw Maas running up the hallway, dodging carts of envelopes, with other mail carriers jumping out of the way of the sprinting 16-year-old. When he arrived at Walter’s desk, the young man was out of breath, but it didn’t stop him from getting out the news:
“Walter. There is something forming here in Chicago that will allow us to enlist!” Russell gasped.
Walter set down the stack of envelopes and leaned forward in anticipation. “Aren’t we too young?” he asked.
“That’s the great part,” Maas explained breathlessly. “They don’t care if we’re too young: they need volunteers. We can drive ambulances to help wounded doughboys. We won’t be fighting, so it doesn’t matter if we are 17 or not!”
That afternoon, over a pile of unsorted mail, Walter Disney and Russell Maas began to conceive a plan to join this organisation, the American Red Cross, in serving the injured and sick European victims of war and American soldiers. The conversation continued over the next few days; the two wanted to account for everything to ensure that they wouldn’t be turned down for the same reasons they had been rejected by the Navy or stopped like they were by their parents when they tried to run away to the Canadian Army.
In late August, Walter and Russell took the tram to the Oakland neighbourhood of south Chicago to the American Red Cross Automotive and Mechanical Bureau Department of Personnel, where they would apply to work for the relief organisation. Upon entering the building located on Cottage Grove Avenue, they found a number of men in American Red Cross uniforms conducting business, as the building also served as the main headquarters for the nearby Camp Scott, a base where the American Red Cross, or A.R.C., trained ambulance drivers that would be sent across the Atlantic. Interestingly, the barracks for Camp Scott was located on the eastern side of Washington Park where it met the Midway Plaisance, less than half a mile from where Flora and Elias first lived at Vernon Avenue upon their arrival in Chicago in 1889.
The Camp Scott training station was not the only way that Chicago was involved with the American Red Cross during the First World War. In fact, the great city and its many citizens were some of the organisation’s biggest supporters. Shortly after America entered the war, the American Red Cross organised a membership campaign in the city, encouraging Chicagoans to contribute a few dollars to the relief organisation’s fundraising efforts. In one month, from May to June 1917, more than 300,000 new members joined the American Red Cross in Chicago alone, earning it the title of one of the world’s first ‘Red Cross cities’.
War fever had struck the city, heightened only by its success in the membership campaign. City leaders and Chicago’s numerous organisations sought more opportunities to support the American Red Cross. Newspapers took out full-page advertisements, including one describing a wounded soldier who was only saved due to financial contributions such as those given during the membership drive. Publicity stunts that were used to bring attention to American Red Cross efforts were staged around the city, including one where all public transportation in the metropolis was stopped for 60 seconds. Performances were given in the city’s theatres telling the stories of American Red Cross medics. Perhaps most importantly were the parades, which streamed through the business district on a daily basis at noon. Attractive girls dressed in American Red Cross outfits called to the men gaping along the pavements, encouraging them either to enlist or to support the American Red Cross, while others walked through the crowds collecting donations. At the end of the parade, seated on a flatbed trailer, was Uncle Sam, a wartime personification of the United States. Wearing his characteristic red striped trousers and white-and-blue top hat, the character sat at a desk, ‘calculating’ donations on an adding machine and occasionally scratching his white beard. At times, he would look up at the crowds on the pavements, waving to them and calling down that they needed to donate their time and money for the boys overseas. It was probably a parade like this one that Walter experienced when he was patriotically inspired to enlist.
Perhaps the group that did most for the American Red Cross in Chicago and its support of the American effort during the days following the nation’s entry into the war was the women. Social organisations, such as the Women’s Fortnightly, became active participants in supporting the American government and military in the war effort, as well as relief organisations including the American Red Cross. During the years of active American participation, the Women’s Fortnightly created propaganda for the War Information Committee of the Women’s Council of National Defence, sold War Bonds, held patriotic rallies, and sewed more than 1,300 garments and bandages to be used by the American Red Cross. The social club also hosted a speakers’ series on war matters, including being visited by His Grace, the Archbishop of York, the Most Reverend Cosmo Gordon Lang, D.D, D.C.L., LL.D., Primate of England and Metropolitan.
All of this war fever, both fear and hawkishness, wasn’t lost on young Walter Disney. After some investigation, he and Russell Maas realised that they did, in fact, have to be 17 to join the American Red Cross. However, they were so determined to serve that they concocted a plan to ensure that their youth wasn’t discovered. The applications that the two submitted on that late summer day weren’t for Walter Disney and Russell Maas, but rather for Walter and Russell St. John, twin brothers who were determined to help the sick and injured.
After answering a few questions about themselves to one of the enlistment officers, the American Red Cross employee handed Walter and Russell a piece of paper and told them that it needed to be filled out and submitted to the government in order for them to travel overseas. Walter looked down at the United States Passport Application in his hand. As he skimmed over the questions it asked, his stomach dropped: he was required not only to put down his birthday on the application, but also to obtain a parent’s signature because he was younger than 18. Not only would it be difficult to convince Elias and Flora to let him serve in Europe, there was no way he would be able to convince them to allow him to forge his birth date so he was ‘old enough’ to serve.
Handing the two boys their American Red Cross training uniforms, the officer explained that they would receive notification of when they should report to Camp Scott. Trying to hide their excitement, Walter and Russell grinned at each other as they turned and walked out of the office back into the city that had so inspired their patriotism for the American war effort.