Don Bowling was born in Penoke, near Princeton, West Virginia in July 1925. His father was superintendent of mines and they lived well during the Depression [Annotator's Note: The Great Depression, a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States]. They had 40 acres of land they lived on in the summers. He had four brothers and four sisters. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Bowling if he remembers the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He did not give it a lot of thought. Everybody was worried about what was going to happen. They figured the Germans and Japanese would invade. He wanted to get in the service but was too young. He and others in his high school went into the National Guard for training. He was drafted and went to Wisconsin to train for winter warfare. They had skis, weasels [Annotator's Note: M29 Weasel tracked vehicle] and used snowshoes. They did maneuvers in northern Michigan for a month. They stayed in a little town. It was cold. They would make sleeping areas with pine trees near Lake Superior. They went to Camp McCoy, Wisconsin [Annotator's Note: now Fort McCoy in Monroe County, Wisconsin] after that. He was then shipped to New York to get on a ship overseas. They slept in hammocks on an old ship. They zig-zagged [Annotator's Note: a naval anti-submarine maneuver] across the ocean in a convoy and landed in England to prepare for the invasion [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. Eisenhower [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force; 34th President of the United States] tried to tell everybody what they were going to do. He was in the 2nd Infantry Division. Camp McCoy was the ski troops. They thought they were going to Iceland, but they did not.

Don Bowling trained with rifles, machine guns, and mortars. He landed on Omaha [Annotator's Note: Omaha Beach, Normandy, France with the 2nd Infantry Division] on 7 June [Annotator's Note: 7 June 1944]. They went up the hill and tried to get to the top and inland. There were a lot of dead people and vehicles that had been bombed out. There were arms, and guns and artillery shells going off. Big Bertha [Annotator's Note: unable to verify the weapon system Bowling is referring to] was there. They moved inland towards Saint Lo [Annotator's Note: Saint-Lô, France; Bowling looks at a map] at Bayeux [Annotator's Note: Bayeux, France]. They took a lot of prisoners. German resistance was strong all the way through there. The first day was a lot worse with German tanks and troops. He cannot remember a lot of it. Their goal was to take out a submarine base at Brest [Annotator's Note: Brest, France]. A German general sat down on a bench on the road and asked for medical supplies for his troops there. They gave him the supplies and the Germans surrendered. One of them gave Bowling a watch. They acted like they had been forced to fight. He thinks it was Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] pushing them to conquer the world. After the surrender, Bowling and his outfit got on an old train and went past Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France] to the Hurtgen Forest [Annotator's Note: Battle of Hürtgen Forest, 19 September 1944 to 10 February 1945, Hürtgen (Hurtgen), Staatsforst (state forest), Germany]. They were shelled by artillery quite a bit.

The Hurtgen Forest [Annotator's Note: Battle of Hürtgen Forest, 19 September 1944 to 10 February 1945, Hürtgen (Hurtgen), Staatsforst (state forest), Germany] was a pretty difficult fight for Don Bowling and his outfit [Annotator's Note: 2nd Infantry Division]. They went from there to Liege, Belgium where they had a lot of shooting. They were going into attack at Hurtgen Forest and were driven back. Once the weather lifted and the planes could get in, the battle went the other way. Bowling got a bad flu and went in the hospital. They decided to ship him home. He flew back to England in bad weather. Some of the aircraft were lost. They landed and waited for a ship back to the United States. He had worked in Liege, Belgium after getting out of the hospital. He returned to the States on a deluxe ship with good meals. It was really nice and quite different from when he went over. Going over, he had to sleep below deck in hammocks. They docked in Virginia Beach [Annotator's Note: Virginia Beach, Virginia] on the return. He was discharged there. He went back to West Virginia and stayed a while. He decided to go to school at Okmulgee at Oklahoma A&M [Annotator's Note: Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College, now Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology-Okmulgee, Okmulgee, Oklahoma]. He got married and moved to Tulsa [Annotator's Note: Tulsa, Oklahoma]. He did sales and artwork. His paintings have been displayed [Annotator's Note: Bowling points some out in the room he is in]. He did a big painting of Salzburg [Annotator's Note: Salzburg, Austria] and its castles. He designed offices for oil companies for a number of years. He painted for fun and painted everything. He liked sceneries of oceans and mountains. Bowling did not attend any reunions even though he belongs to the Combat Infantrymen's Association [Annotator's Note: Combat Infantrymen's Association, Incorporated]. He did not know a lot of the men. He was concerned for his safety all the time during the war. Seeing people killed or being hauled back [Annotator's Note: after being wounded] made him wonder when he would be in the same thing. It turned out good for him and he considers himself very fortunate. Today, a lot of the country understands and recognizes what World War 2 was all about, but a lot of them do not.