Mort Walker was born in 1923 in El Dorado, Kansas. His father was an architect who built towns in locations where oil deposits were discovered. Walker's family suffered terribly during the Great Depression. His father had very little work. His mother would go to the butcher shops to beg for bones which she would use to make soup. Walker was the smallest guy in his class. When he went into the Army and was fed regularly he grew quite a bit. During the depression, Walker had jobs delivering for a drug store, selling magazines, and delivering newspapers. His father would occasionally borrow money from him. Walker and his three siblings all worked during the depression years. Walker went to school until the fifth grade. When he was 12 years old he was written up in national news stories for selling cartoons. He learned that he could make money doing it so he dropped out of school and worked creating and selling cartoons. He soon learned that writing was a big part of creating cartoons so he went back to school. He was the editor of the school newspaper in junior high and editor of the school magazine when he was in college. One of Walker's writing teachers in college thought Walker was an exceptional writer and invited him to dinner one night. After dinner the teacher asked Walker if he wanted to write a great novel. When Walker replied that he wanted to write a comic strip the teacher was shocked and walked away from him. Walker was driving his car and listening to the radio when he learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor. He thought the Japanese would be beaten very quickly. He had followed the war in Europe and the Pacific a little.

Mort Walker was just getting going in college when he got his draft notice. Walker thought the Army was a great experience. After being drafted, Walker went by train with a large group of other young men to Florida where they took basic training on a golf course. When he was growing up, his father told him that he had to learn to protect his family since there were still wild men out west. Walker worked out a lot and was well built. He and his brother were both boxers and he even put on boxing exhibitions. After basic training, Walker was sent to Camp Crowder, Missouri to attend a radio repair school. He did not like it so when he learned that he could apply for college training he did. He applied for training in psychiatry and was accepted. He was sent to Washington University in St. Louis but when he arrived he learned that he had been sent to an engineering course. He worked hard and did pretty well. While in engineering school he learned that one of the fields was architecture. His father was an architect and had built many buildings. Walker had worked with his father and was familiar with the business of being an architect. He did very well in school and after his military career he built buildings. After completing architecture school, Walker learned that applications were being taken for officer candidate school. The test he took was one he had taken in engineering school and he was able to complete it quickly. The same day he was accepted and sent to officer candidate school.

After completing his training, Mort Walker volunteered for overseas duty because he had heard that once the war was over those with overseas service would get out of the Army first. Walker shipped overseas and landed in Naples, Italy. When he arrived he was picked up by a jeep and taken to an ordnance depot where weapons and equipment were issued. Since Walker was unfamiliar with the workings of an ordnance depot he was assigned to be the intelligence and investigating officer. He was also in charge of a prisoner of war camp nearby that housed 10,000 German POWs [Annotator's Note: prisoners of war]. The POW camp was guarded by Italian soldiers and Walker worked with them. He also investigated rapes, murders, and thefts and had to go to court to testify in those cases. Walker made a lot of friends with the men he dealt with, including the German prisoners. The Germans all wanted to know about America. The German POWs did not have anything to do so they made board games and painted pictures on them. They also displayed their works and Walker would go see them. Walker took his jeep and drove all over Italy. He went to see all of the sights. He brought two cameras and set up his own dark room. He had a German working with him making the photographs. Walker also brought his sketch book with him and made funny drawings of all of the funny things and people he saw. It was almost like being on vacation.

One day, Mort Walker heard on the radio that the war was over so he arranged for a train to take all of the Germans, who were by then good friends of his, to Geneva where he turned them all over to the Red Cross. On the way back he stopped in the port city of Leghorn and asked if any of the ships were heading to America. He learned that there was one and asked if he could hitch a ride back to the United States. He was given a cabin on the ship and returned to the United States without any orders to do so. When the ship docked in New York Walker was thrilled to see the Statue of Liberty. He got off the ship and immediately went to get a hamburger since he had not had one in about a year. He then went to a base in New York and requested to be discharged. He was told that he had to go back to Chicago which he did. He reported in, requested separation, and was mustered out of the Army. He then got on a train and went back to Missouri. He returned to school and completed his journalism degree.

Mort Walker then got on a train and went back to Missouri University. He returned to school to complete his journalism degree. He did very well in school and became the editor of the school magazine. They set records for advertising sales and got write ups in national papers for the articles they published. After a run in with the head of the journalism school Walker was kicked out. He went to the dean of the university and explained what had happened. The dean told him to complete his degree in a different field. Walker did not wait for graduation. He flew to New York and took a room in a condemned building in which artists were allowed to live for eight dollars a month.

When Mort Walker was in charge of the POW camp [Annotators Note: see segment titled Overseas Duty in Italy] there were a number of escape attempts. Fortunately for him he was always tipped off. He was also told of instances of prisoners stealing items that they were supposed to be destroying and selling them to the Italians at the dump. Some of the POWs would sneak out at night and spend the night with their Italian girlfriends then would sneak back into the camp in the morning. Walker and some other officers hid out and caught an offender. As a punishment, Walker had the offender dig a ditch with a spoon. Walker then left and when he returned he found the ditch completed. The other German POWs started digging as soon as Walker left. Walker knew he was defeated. He laughed it off and told the prisoners to fill the ditch in. One night Walker was approached by an Italian couple who informed him that two American soldiers had taken their daughter into an abandoned building. He went into the building and caught them. He arrested them and testified at the trial. The men were given slaps on the wrist and let go. Another incident that occurred was when Walker learned that the American guards at a local dump were forcing the German POWs to run around and while they were running the guards would shoot at them. When one of the prisoners was hit and killed Walker arrested the offender for murder and brought him to trial. The offender was punished. After going through a war, people become desensitized to killing. Overseeing the POW camp made Walker realize how terrible war is.

While in Italy, Mort Walker had heard about the holocaust but did not know much about it. It was not until later that he learned how many people had been killed. He thought they had just been imprisoned. Learning of the holocaust, then comparing it to the friendships he formed with the German POWs [Annotator's Note: prisoners of war] under his control, made him realize that people need to come up with a way to settle their differences without killing each other. During the war Walker did not like the idea that he would have to kill the enemy. Much of his strip [Annotator's Note: Mort Walker is the creator of the comic strip Beatle Bailey] is about the lessons he learned during the war. Walker was a good shot and even taught marksmanship but shooting never appealed to him. He is generally a good natured individual. While in training he kept up with the war in the Pacific. He was glad that he did not have to go there. He had taken amphibious training in San Diego and is glad he never had to use it. When the men get out of the landing craft they are totally exposed and were lucky if they did not get killed. When Walker learned of the atomic bomb being dropped he was impressed.

When Mort Walker moved to New York he was the top selling cartoonist in the country. He did a lot with the Saturday Evening Post. One day an editor suggested that Walker use a particular character in his cartoons so he did. Walker also worked for a publishing company as the editor of three magazines. He did not make much doing that so he quit and started doing Beetle [Annotator's Note: the comic strip character Beetle Bailey]. The cartoon started out as a college cartoon but since the majority of readers had not gone to college it did not sell. An editor suggested that Walker put Beetle in the Army because it was a common experience. He did so and it took off. He went from eight papers to 1,000 papers almost overnight. Walker was afraid that when the war ended no one would want to read about soldiers anymore. He had seen that happen at the end of World War 2 with comics such as Bill Mauldon's Sad Sack. He started another strip featuring Beetle's sister Lois. That strip did well too. At the time, the tax for Walker's tax bracket was about 70 percent. To help reduce his tax burden he put most of his family on the payroll. His family helped him do the strips and one of his kids helped him do the drawings. He ended up with four of his children on the payroll.

The Beetle Bailey strip was heavily influenced by Mort Walker's time in the Army during World War 2 and many of his characters were based on people he knew in the Army. The character "Sarge" was based on a sergeant Walker had while attending Washington University in St. Louis. The sergeant was big and tough and yelled at the men frequently. At Christmas time, however, Walker and the others saw the sergeant's soft side when he wrote a very emotional poem for them titled "My Boys." The general was based on a colonel Walker knew. The experiences he wrote about mirrored the experiences he had in the Army but he had to make them funny. Once his strips were successful, Walker traveled the country giving speeches and receiving awards. One time he was given a work for hire contract by his publishing company stating that if he died, the publishing company would own the cartoon strip. He refused to sign it because he wanted his children to inherit the strips and worked for over a year without a contract. The company finally came to him and asked him what he wanted. He asked for a one million dollar bonus for signing the contract and they gave it to him. The creator of the comic strip Archie, Montana [Annotator's Note: Bob Montana], was a friend of Walker's. Montana never enjoyed the success the strip had. The publishers made a lot of money off of the work. Walker saw that happen to many cartoonists, especially the guys who created Batman and Superman. Those guys were broke when they retired so a mass of cartoonists held a rally in Times Square for them. After the rally the publishers agreed to pay them 25,000 dollars a year. At one point, Stars and Stripes dropped Beetle Bailey because it was thought that Walker was making fun of the Army. The strip was picked back up and Walker was later called to the Pentagon and honored for his work.

Mort Walker's most memorable experience of World War 2 was getting out alive. He served during the war because he was drafted. He did have a lot of experiences. He traveled all over the United States and Europe and made many friends. He still makes a living off of the experiences he had. World War 2 taught people of the horrors and costs of war. It has influenced the United States to help other countries make peace and has helped America befriend some nations instead of fighting them. Future generations should be taught about World War 2. They should know about those who were killed and those who were saved. They should learn about Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] and Mussolini [Annotator's Note: Italian dictator Benito Mussolini] and see why an insane person should not be allowed to take over a country. That is what Walker learned.