Clarence Carlson was born Kittson, Minnesota in June 1921. His family moved to Svea Township where he attended school. [Annotator's Note: The interview is paused for a moment to prevent Carlson's rocking chair from moving.] He did not know any better but growing up during the Great Depression was tough. He was the second of nine children. His father and mother were farmers and he worked on the farm before joining the military. He enlisted in September 1942 at age 22. He remembers when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: Hawaii] and knew he would be drafted. He did not know where Pearl Harbor was at the time. He had not thought of volunteering because he thought he would be drafted anyway. He felt that getting in to the Army Air Forces was a miracle. He was all set to go into the Army. After being inducted at Fort Snelling [Annotator's Note: Hennepin County, Minnesota], he was sent to Tampa, Florida for basic training. He never got a reason for being sent there and he did not ask any questions. He felt quite fortunate to be assigned to the Army Air Force.

Clarence Carslon was sent to basic training in Tampa, Florida. From there he went to Lake Charles, Louisiana. He was listed as a medical technician. He had no medical experience before the war and does not know why he was put in medical training. He was rated as a medic upon completion. He spent about six months training in Lake Charles. He got a leave home once. Then he was sent to Camp Kilmer [Annotator's Note: Camp Kilmer, New Jersey] for deployment to England. He was assigned to the 386th Bombardment Group [Annotator's Note: 555th Bombardment Squadron, 386th Bombardment Group, 9th Air Force]. His group was equipped with B-26 Marauders [Annotator's Note: Martin B-26 Marauder medium bomber]. Carlson traveled to England on the RMS Queen Elizabeth. There were about 22,000 people aboard. The trip took six days and they traveled alone. He went to lay down for a rest at Camp Kilmer and woke up to find that they were all by themselves on the ocean and not in a big group. They traveled fast. They did not go in a straight line to keep the enemy off them. There was one bad night during which the ship rocked around and many of the men got seasick. He was given a pass when he got on the boat but he lost it. That was the only way to get meals. They passed out cookies, so he lived on cookies. Carlson lucked out and met a good friend of his aboard. The friend was very sick. It was the last time Carlson ever saw him. His friend was killed on D-Day Annotator's Note: Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. Carlson was in England for about 18 months. The group flew over the channel quite often and they would move to different air bases so the flight echelon would be closer to their targets. They were at four different bases before the moved across the channel.

When Clarence Carlson was assigned to England he had no idea what it would look like. The English were very good to them. They landed in Scotland and took a train to his first base, Great Dunmow [Annotator's Note: in Little Easton, England]. They had big sandwiches to eat on the train. He left the United States about 1 June 1943 and arrived in England six days later. Carlson worked in the dispensary. There was a little room for the patients. He waited on patients, mostly people with flu and the like. The wounded went to a general hospital. His job was to put a lot of sulfa into people who had the flu or gonorrhea. [Annotator's Note: Gonorrhea is an infectious sexually transmitted disease. The interviewer asks if sulfa worked for gonorrhea and Carlson laughs.] He tried to stay away from giving shots. He was charge of quarters one day and a second lieutenant came in with gonorrhea and Carlson gave him a shot of penicillin. It was the first time he gave a shot. Carlson did not interact with any returning wounded. The hospital was in France and not England. Only twice in the service did he witness a plane going down. One Christmas morning in France, an aircraft went down on take-off. One of the captains was decorated for going into the burning aircraft with bullets going off. When he had been at MacDill Field [Annotator's Note: now MacDill Air force Base in Tampa, Florida], they lost a plane during take-off. The B-26 [Annotator's Note: Martin B-26 Marauder medium bomber] was a tricky plane to get off the ground.

The different crews in Clarence Carlson's squadron [Annotator's Note: 555th Bombardment Squadron, 386th Bombardment Group, 9th Air Force] pretty much stuck with their own. They each had their private eating places and recreation areas. There were a couple thousand people, a lot of pilots and crewmen. Each squadron had its own commanding officers and there were more over the whole group. There was a lot of turnover in commanders too. Carlson had Colonel Beaty [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Froces Lieutenant COlonel Sherman R. Beaty] who was rather young, as his commander. He led quite a few missions. [Annotator's Note: Carlson corrects himself.] Colonel Maitland [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Froces Brigadier General Lester James Maitland] was the guy before Beaty. Beaty transferred to his own group. Carlson says England was pretty quiet. Nobody bombed them. He would just get up every morning and go to the dispensary and work. The evenings were pretty quiet. They did not have much recreation. If working at night as charge of quarters, he would work alone. He never had much to do until the day the Germans gave up. Carlson looked out the window and could see guys were already plastered from celebrating. One man came that night and was bloody. Carlson did not inspect him too much and called his captain for help. It was only a little scratch, but it was scary.

While stationed in England [Annotator's Note: at Royal Air Force Boxted, Colchester, England], Clarence Carlson would go into little towns like Bishop's Stortford and have a coffee or beer sometimes. He can still see the Englishmen frowning at them. They ate pretty well, and the English did not. For the most part though they got along, sometimes a little too well. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer states that 70,000 Americans came back with wives. Carlson laughs and says that is right.] On D-Day [Annotator's Note: the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944], Carlson was relaxing and woke up to a lot of commotion. There were airplanes all over the place. Nobody had to tell him that was the day because everything was on the move. Ground crews were loading bombs and mechanics were working. The group [Annotator's Note: Carlson was a member of the 555th Bombardment Squadron, 386th Bombardment Group, 9th Air Force] moved to France [Annotator's Note: Beaumont-sur-Oise Airfield in October 1944] to a town close to Paris. They had a big building that the Germans had built and covered with tents and netting that the Americans used as a mess hall. In England, they lived in Quonset huts. In France, they were in tents and it was winter. They had to chop wood for their pot-belly stoves. The Germans had tunnels all over the place. The Americans took the mud off the lumber and cut them up for firewood. They would also cut firewood in the woods. The poor Frenchmen were using a small wheelbarrow to fill with sticks. The Americans would go and chop big trees down and bring them back. They did not help the French too much. The French were nice but hard to communicate with. His duties in France were a little different from England but he forgets now how they were set up in France. They operated in tents more than they did in England.

Clarence Carlson was only stationed at St. John in France [Annotator's Note: Beaumont Sur Oise Airfield, Beaumont Sur Oise, France]. From there, they went to Belgium [Annotator's Note: Sint-Truiden/Brustem Airfield]. They had pretty nice living in Belgium. They lived in a big academy with a playground in the middle. They never slept at the same place. Carlson was in Paris once but just for a short time. He spent six or seven hours looking around. Being in France and living in tents, one had to be careful. They did not want to be involved with the locals too much. There was not too much pestering of them for food or anything there but there was more of that in France than England. He liked living in England better as he could travel a bit more there. He and a friend would visit London and would sightsee and drink a little more than they should at times. Another friend had gotten a bottle of rye and that was tough on the system the next day. The wine there gave a terrible hangover. He did not travel far off the base and most of their celebrating was on the base. He saw bombed out areas in London. Piccadilly Circus [Annotator's Note: road junction and public space, Westminster, England] was knocked out and it was kind of exciting to see that. There would be buzz bombs [Annotator's Note: V-1 flying bomb] every day or two that came in over the treetops. If it hit a tree or building it would blow up. One went right over the dispensary one night. They were lax when they first moved to England regarding bomb shelters. One night a bomber came over and dropped a bomb that killed someone. They really worked to dig foxholes the next morning.

Clarence Carlson was in Belgium when President Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] died. Harry Truman [Annotator's Note: Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States] took over then. Carlson does not recall being too excited about him dying. He was in Belgium when the Germans surrendered and does not recall how that news was delivered. He felt great and there was a lot of celebrating, but he was working. Carlson says being overseas at holiday time did not affect them too much. They had a big meal. A lot of soldiers had friends invite them to dinner. It was just another day for him to have a good meal. Carlson did not have anything against the Germans. He did not have any contact with them. He was not in Brussels [Annotator's Note: Brussels, Belgium] for long when the war was over in May 1945. He thinks around August he got ready to move and ended up back in the United States in September. It took 14 days to get home on a Liberty ship [Annotator's Note: class of rapidly produced cargo ship]. It really rocked when the weather got bad.

Clarence Carlson enjoyed Belgium. He was able to communicate better than he did in France. They had good-looking people, got a lot to eat, fried eggs, cafes and good French fries. A lot of Belgians spoke English. Carlson was already home when the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. He was at a dance when it was announced that the war with Japan was over. He was on a 30 day leave and was out on the town. There was not too much of a celebration. There were some friends at the dance with him. He went back to Camp Kilmer [Annotator's Note: Camp Kilmer, New Jersey] before being sent home for 30 days. While home, it was announced they did not have to return to Camp Kilmer. He went to Fort McCoy [Annotator's Note: Monroe County, Wisconsin] to be discharged. The plans before this were to send him to the Pacific. He did not feel good about that. He had a good group in his squadron [Annotator's Note: 555th Bombardment Squadron, 386th Bombardment Group, 9th Air Force], and he did not want to be assigned to a different one. His unit had been cut down to three only and he thought he would be put into the infantry. He was happy the war ended. At the time, he thought the atomic bomb was a good idea but now he wonders. His son studies these things, and he indicates the bombs should not have been dropped because we were already winning the war. It killed so many innocent people. Carlson was glad it was over though. He was discharged in September 1945 as Private First Class.

Clarence Carlson did not take advantage of the G.I. Bill but he feels he should have. He does not regret leaving the military but he did think about it years later. He would not have been in the medical field. He wonders to this day how he ended up being a medic. He did not have trouble finding work or transitioning to being a civilian. He kept busy celebrating. People would not let him stay home. The happiest part of the war for Carlson was being in Belgium when it was all over [Annotator's Note: after the war in Europe ended]. He does not really know why he served. He did not think that much about it. After Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941], he knew what he would be doing. He just waited to be called. The war did not change his life too much. He guesses the war got him thinking about how life can change and go. He thinks Americans have a pretty good feeling that the war accomplished something. He thinks The National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: New Orleans, Louisiana] and others like it are alright to teach about the war.