Donald Rudolph Carlson was born in 1929 [Annotator's Note: in Chicago, Illinois]. Life was great growing up. His grammar school days were fun and his high school days were exceptional. The war came along in 1939 and America got in 1941. His brother flew for the RCAF [Annotator's Note: Royal Canadian Air Force], transferred to the American Air Force [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces] in 1943, and flew a total of 450 missions. He flew Spitfires [Annotator's Note: Supermarine Spitfire fighter aircraft] and Mustangs [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft]. He was shot down twice. Once over France during Normandy and once over Prague, Czechoslovakia [Annotator's Note: now Prague, Czech Republic]. 65 years later, Carlson received a letter from someone in Prague that contained a picture of his brother standing by his parachute watching his P-51 burn. A farmer put a pitchfork to his brother's throat. The Gestapo [Annotator's Note: German Geheime Staatspolizei or Secret State Police; abbreviated Gestapo] took him to a concentration camp. The 97th Infantry Division freed the camp 15 days later. His brother came home a completely different person. In 1950, Carlson was drafted for the Korean War [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953]. He went to Europe and in 1951, he was shipped to Fort Riley, Kansas [Annotator's Note: in Geary and Riley counties, Kansas]. After training, he had to fight a flood on the Kansas River [Annotator's Note: Great Flood of 1951, May to July 1951]. They trained all day, went and got milkshakes, and then got into trucks and went to the dike to fill sandbags. The water was up to their ankles. They were there a week in horizontal, gale-force, winds. A Mexican kid in the Army fell in a sinkhole up to his neck. Carlson helped pull him out. The general in command lost his job for jeopardizing their lives. They slept afterwards and were awakened to prepare full field packs and march five miles into the hills. They watched their barracks, and some vehicles float away. They bivouacked [Annotator's Note: a bivouac is a temporary campsite] on the hills in pup tents [Annotator's Note: also called a shelter-half, type of partial tent designed to provide temporary shelter or concealment] for one month. President Harry Truman [Annotator's Note: Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States] flew over to see the damage and then ordered that all mail be parachuted in for the men. It was combat without bullets flying. The water peaked at 33 feet. About three weeks later, they went down to clean up the mess. The railroads were washed out. After they were repaired, more troops came in and his basic training began.

After basic training, Donald Rudolph Carlson was shipped to Fort Bliss, Texas for training in an anti-aircraft battery as a radar operator. They did 25 mile field marches at night to Alamogordo, New Mexico where the atomic bomb was blown up [Annotator's Note: called Trinity, code name of the first nuclear test at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range, now White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico]. He transferred to Camp McCoy, Wisconsin [Annotator's Note: now Fort McCoy in Monroe County, Wisconsin] to relieve the Georgia National Guard who had been called up due to the Korean Conflict [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953]. Their alert position was Chicago, Illinois, which was his hometown, in March 1952. There was ice on the road there. He was with a weapons trailer of 90mm shells [Annotator's Note: for the 90mm Gun M1/M2/M3]. The carrier flipped over. Carlson and a buddy had been playing cards and the buddy got a broken back. They were the last vehicle in the convoy. An ambulance came and got his buddy. They went to Chicago and set up camp in vacant lots. They put their four 90mm guns and radar up to protect Chicago. Any enemy aircraft would have had a hard time getting through. He had six months and 25 days to go before discharge. He got orders to go to Korea and was nervous. He thinks he would have been a coward on the front lines. His orders were cancelled, and he was ordered to Germany. He and his unit [Annotator's Note: Company A, 1st Battalion, 85th Mountain Infantry Regiment, 10th Mountain Division] spent 11 days on fierce ocean waves. He was sicker than a dog. They had one day of calm weather. They went through the English Channel and prayed at the Utah [Annotator's Note: Utah Beach, Normandy, France] and Omaha Beach [Annotator's Note: Omaha Beach, Normandy, France] cemeteries. They went to Bremerhaven, Germany. There were two massive, 16 inch guns [Annotator's Note: 40.6cm SK C/34, also called the Adolf gun, 16 inch German naval gun] to protect the harbor. They stayed in Hitler's [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] Panzer Corps [Annotator's Note: German tank corps] billets [Annotator's Note: a place, usually civilian or nonmilitary, where soldiers are lodged temporarily] overnight. They then went by train to Karlsruhe, Germany. There was devastation throughout the country from the bombings. Poor women were at every stop selling anything and everything to the soldiers on the train. After he got into Karlsruhe, he went to the 552 Anti-aircraft Battalion [Annotator's Note: 552nd Anti-aircraft Battalion, 12th Anti-aircraft Artillery, 7th Army]. An officer ran out and asked if he played basketball. Carlson replied that he did and was ordered to report to the gym the next morning. He then played basketball for four months, won the championship, and was shipped home. During that time, an old, World War 2 sergeant was their radar crew chief. He was chewing out the crew and Carlson said it was not fair. Carlson was reported for insubordination. He reported to the company commander who asked if he was from Chicago. They both had gone to the same high school, so Carlson lucked out again. He then shipped home and ended his Army career.

Donald Rudolph Carlson got involved with the 10th Mountain Division Association [Annotator's Note: National Association of the 10th Mountain Division] after he was trained at Fort Riley [Annotator's Note: in Geary and Riley counties, Kansas]. He had a 45 minute class in the history of the 10th Mountain Division. He was transferred all over after that. He was a great skier and was in Vail [Annotator's Note: Vail, Colorado] one year. Vail was started by Pete Seibert [Annotator's Note: Peter Werner Seibert, American skier] who was a 10th Mountain veteran, along with Bob Parker [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify] in 1962. Carlson was invited to join their group and has been a member for 25 years. He helped develop the 10th Mountain Monument [Annotator's Note: in Breckenridge, Colorado]. He had a chalet there. He had a quadruple bypass [Annotator's Note: a type of heart surgery] and could not live at that elevation anymore. He moved to Chicago [Annotator's Note: Chicago, Illinois]. There has been an increase in the attention given to the 10th Mountain Division [Annotator's Note: at the time of this interview]. There is a camaraderie even among the veterans of the Division who served after World War 2. In memory of the 10th Mountain Division, Carlson designed a license plate for Colorado. It was approved and as of four years ago [Annotator's Note: from the time of this interview], 20,000 plates had been sold to people in Colorado. He also built a carving of their logo that is in the Vail Ski Museum [Annotator's Note: Colorado Snowsports Museum and Hall of Fame, Vail, Colorado], which also has a lot of 10th Mountain equipment.

Donald Rudolph Carlson feels that World War 2 changed the world. He did not fight in it, because in 1941 when we [Annotator's Note: the United States] got into the war, he was 12 years old. From 1941 to 1945, the country was solidified. Back then, the people in the street talked to each other, unlike today. When the war was over, there were buses taking people all around who were cheering and kissing perfect strangers. There were paper drives, and war bond [Annotator's Note: debt securities issued by a government to finance military operations and other expenditure in times of war] stamps. His grammar school bought enough war bonds to buy a plane and a jeep. He was a Sea Scout [Annotator's Note: international Scouting movement with an emphasis on water-based activities] and then the war was over. He was lucky enough to be a year younger or he would have been drafted. His generation lucked out. Carlson feels the Museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana] is of great significance. The generations from after the war should never forget it, and especially the Holocaust [Annotator's Note: also called the Shoah; the genocide of European Jews during World War 2]. Many people say there was never a Holocaust. There was. The more that young people see the Museum, they will know what the Greatest Generation [Annotator's Note: nickname for World War 2 veterans based on the title of a 1998 book by journalist Tom Brokaw] did for them. [Annotator's Note: Carlson becomes emotional.] It will live on. If not for that generation, the war would have been lost. God knows what would have happened if Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] had taken over. There is a lot of debt to be paid in memory value for what they did.