Carl Landwehr was born in 1925 in New Orleans, Louisiana. His family never had a lot of money, but they never really knew they were poor during the Great Depression. When he graduated from high school he was drafted. He was at school when he learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He was 16. He thought to himself that they will never get him in the service. He and his friends talked about the war in school. He was playing baseball in school. His coach wanted to talk to him about the next year. Landwehr told him there would be no next year because he would be in the service. He graduated in June and was drafted in August 1943. He felt he had to do his duty. He went to Army basic training in the infantry in Muskogee, Oklahoma, in the Rainbow Division, the 42nd Infantry Division. He was in an anti-tank outfit, so he shot 57mm anti-tank guns [Annotator's Note: M1 57mm anti-tank gun] and went to demolition school. He spent a full year in training. After basic, the Division was broken up and Landwehr went to Camp Myles Standish [Annotator's Note: Taunton, Massachusetts] to board a ship to Europe. He went on the RMS Aquitania, sister ship of the RMS Lusitania [Annotator's Note: British ocean liner sunk by German submarine 7 May 1915] that started World War 1. They went overseas without escort due to the speed. It was a British ship and the food was terrible, boiled kidneys for breakfast. He did not know what to think about. He did know there was fighting in Italy, but he knew nothing of the D-Day plans [Annotator's Note: Allied invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944]. The ship landed in Glasgow, Scotland on D-Day and they boarded trains to Southampton, England.

Carl Landwehr arrived in Southampton, England on D-Day [Annotator's Note: the Allied invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944]. They knew of the invasion then. They then boarded a ship on D plus five [Annotator’s Note: D-Day plus five days or 11 June 1944] and crossed the English Channel to France. They went ashore across Omaha Beach. Landwehr was assigned to the 8th Infantry Division once he was ashore. He remained in a reserve unit right behind Saint-Lô, France. When Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] broke through at Saint-Lô, they headed to Brittany, France to the German submarine pens. There, they waited for the Air Force to knock out the gates of the pens. Landwehr was in the hedgerows on the front lines there. He was wounded by a German hand grenade. He was wounded in the leg and the doctor told him he was lucky they were not in World War 1 or his leg would have been amputated immediately. Landwehr still has shrapnel in his leg, hand and forehead. The grenade hit a sergeant near him, Olsen [Annotator's Note: no given name provided], he was wounded too. Landwehr tried to get back to the aid station before a medic gave him a painkiller and put him on jeep to take him there. He was trying to go back to the front, but they put him on ship back to England. He and the other wounded were laying on the bed of the ship. There was a wounded German soldier next to him and Landwehr thought the German would try to kill him. Another soldier told him that the German was more afraid than Landwehr was. A German submarine came down from Norway and chased the ship for two days before it was finally able to cross the English Channel back to Southampton, England. There, he was sent to a rehabilitation hospital in Exeter, England. He knew he had been hit by the grenade. Luckily, his backpack and raincoat took some of the shrapnel. He saw blood but had no idea of how badly he was hurt. He could hardly see due to the blood and knew he could not fight anymore. He stayed there for a few months. When he was well enough, they transferred him to the 8th Air Force in High Wycombe, England [Annotator's Note: High Wycombe was where the 8th Air Force Bomber Command Headquarters was located].

Carl Landwehr was transferred to the 8th Air Force in High Wycombe [Annotator's Note: 8th Air Force Bomber Command Headquarters in High Wycombe, England] after recovering from being wounded by a hand grenade. He was in the 8th Infantry Division when he was wounded. In the Air Force he was a draftsman working in intelligence. He would take pictures that General Roosevelt's [Annotators Note: US Army Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt III; eldest son of President Theodore Roosevelt; only general to land in the first wave on D-Day and the oldest man to take part in D-Day] reconnaissance squadron would take of the German train marshalling yards and determine the number of trains and schedules for the bombing missions. He liked the work because he knew he was doing some good. At night, he would get a pass to go into town and have a beer or two. He was not anxious to go back into combat. England was nice. He went into London and found an American restaurant he would go to. He did not like British food. He saw the Queen of England [Annotator's Note: Elizabeth II; Elizabeth Alexandra Mary, Queen of the United Kingdom] as a young girl with her sister [Annotator's Note: Margaret Rose; Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon]. They were being rowed in a boat on the Thames River. The King of England [Annotator's Note: George VI; Albert Frederick Arthur George; King of the United Kingdom] visited the base to see Doolittle [Annotator's Note: USAAF then USAF General James Harold Doolittle; aviation pioneer; commander 12th Air Force, North America; 15th Air Force, Mediterranean; 8th Air Force, Europe] and Landwehr got to see the King. He never thought either of them would live long enough to be around this long. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer turns off a clock that was chiming.] General Doolittle was preparing to bomb Japan with the atomic bomb, so 8th Air Force was shut down and Landwehr was then transferred to the 9th Air Force.

Carl Landwehr was transferred from the 8th Air Force in England to the 9th Air Force in Frankfurt, Germany. He was put in a unit on a project called Casey Jones [Annotator's Note: photo-mapping and intelligence gathering flights over Europe and North Africa]. A pilot named Mr. Tobin [Annotator's Note: no given name provided] was systematically remapping Europe. Landwehr would take the flight paths and make sure they did not miss anything. He was in a small SS [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization] camp that had been converted it to a living space. It was not bad there, but he was not happy. He wanted to go home. It was 1945 and he had had enough. He did not smoke, so he would trade his cigarettes for fresh deer meat from the local Germans. The Germans did not love the Americans, but they tolerated them. His name is German and means "Land Army." He saw a street named after him. He found out then that the name originated in the 16th century. Around Berlin, the Germans had built a canal for defensive purposes. The people who defended the canal were called the "Landwehrs." He found out a lot of his history. He went back for the 50th Anniversary of the invasion [Annotator's Note: the Allied invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944]. He was in Oklahoma were there was a battalion of German prisoners. He wished he had learned the German language from his grandmother. Nobody treated him poorly for having German ancestors, unlike what happened to the poor Japanese in the United States. He kept up with the war in the Pacific because he wanted the whole thing to be over with. When Doolittle [Annotator's Note: USAAF then USAF General James Harold Doolittle; aviation pioneer; commander 12th Air Force, North America; 15th Air Force, Mediterranean; 8th Air Force, Europe] dropped the bombs [Annotator's Note: atomic bomb drops on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in August 1945], Landwehr knew that was the end of the war. He had no qualms whatsoever and wished he was there to pull the lever. He wanted to get home to his future wife. They have been married 66 years. They corresponded all during the war.

Carl Landwehr was able to get a letter to his mother telling her of his being wounded, before the Army went to tell her. He was happy he was able to do that, so she knew he was ok. He received a lot of packages from his family and girlfriend. He got around 75 of them, once a week almost, especially when he was in the hospital. All of the guys loved to get homemade cookies. He also got a lot of muffins. Souvenirs were hard to come by, so he did not get much to send home. Landwehr was in Germany for about six months accumulating enough points to get home. They sent him up to Amsterdam, Netherlands to board a Liberty ship [Annotator's Note: a class of quickly produced cargo ship]. They hit a bad storm right away and it was very frightening. When he returned to the United States he attended Tulane [Annotator's Note: Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana] for a couple of years, majoring in Engineering.

Carl Landwehr has no secrets about his war service. He never saw any of the concentration camps. He had rumors of them but did not know what they really meant. He did go to the Holocaust Museum [Annotator's Note: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.] and he could not believe it. He also went to the Air Museum [Annotator's Note: National Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C.]. When he was wounded he was transferred to an air base in Bristol, England. They were flying leaflet missions over Germany from there and asked for anyone who could fire .50 caliber machine guns [Annotator's Note: .50 caliber Browning AN/M2 machine gun]. Landwehr could fire both .30 and .50 caliber guns so he volunteered. They got halfway across the English Channel when a gas cap came loose on the aircraft and they had to turn back. He did not get to drop any leaflets. When he was in rehabilitation for his wounded leg, they would put him in a whirlpool and give him massages. He would take penicillin in the hospital. They would even pour it right into the open wound until it started to heal. He was in physical therapy for about four months. He had to have a heal put on his shoe because his muscles would not stretch all the way down any longer. The ship he was on was being chased by a submarine and he thought he had been through enough. He did not make friends with a wounded German soldier on the ship with him. Getting wounded was his most memorable experience. He served because it was his obligation. His service allowed him a better education and it made him realize the importance of that. He has good memories despite what went on. If Germany would have gotten control of England, sooner or later they would have been in the United States. With the Japanese invading too, we would have been between two idiots. Landwehr thinks America is realizing the sacrifices they made. He hears himself being called part of "The Greatest Generation." He feels The National WWII Museum, New Orleans, Louisiana and the WWII Monument, Washington, D.C. are very important. The war should be taught to the younger generations, so they understand where their freedom came from.