Don Carter was born in January 1925 in Wellsville, New York and grew up in Hornell [Annotator's Note: Hornell, New York], a town south of Rochester [Annotator's Note: Rochester, New York]. He was the oldest of his siblings and enjoyed an unremarkable childhood in a small town. His father was a contractor who built roads and bridges. His most memorable recollection of his childhood is of a soapbox derby race [Annotator's Note: a race for children driving motorless, improvised vehicles made from crates and crudely resembling racing cars]. He participated in with a kid named Raymond Peck [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify]. Carter came in second place to Peck. As the two boys were being interviewed, someone noticed that Peck's wheels were not to the right specifications and the Soapbox judges were about to disqualify him. Carter's father stepped in and suggested to let Peck fix his wheels and then the boys can race again the following weekend. Carter won the race. He received a trophy from American actor, Pat O'Brien [Annotator's Note: William Joseph Patrick O'Brien]. Peck and Carter remained good friends through their childhood and into the draft age. Peck dated Carter's sister. Peck joined the Navy before graduating high school and was killed on board the USS Yorktown (CV-10) in the Philippine Sea [Annotator's Note: during the Battle of Midway, 4 to 7 June 1942, Midway Atoll]. His father struggled with finding steady work during the Great Depression [Annotator's Note: The Great Depression was a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1945]. Carter had a paper route and used whatever money he earned to help support his family. He also asked his costumers to save their papers and return them to him. As he bundled all the papers together, he would receive some extra cents turning them in for recycling. He only wore used clothes. He never asked his parents for money until he was older. He followed news of the rise of Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] and felt that America would become involved at some point but was wholly unaware of the threat posed by the Japanese at the time. On 7 December 1941, Carter was called into the local newspaper office to sell extra editions of the paper proclaiming the attack on Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He sold papers on the busy Main Street and made a good bit of money. At first, Carter believed that the war would not affect him, but it soon became evident that he would be in the military as older friends and relatives began entering the service.

In June 1943, Don Carter was drafted with 60 other boys from his town [Annotator's Note: Hornell, New York]. They boarded a train and arrived at Camp Upton, Long Island [Annotator's Note: now Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York] to be inducted into the Army. His whole high school graduating class served in the military except for one boy, due to a health issue. He expected to get a draft notice. His mother was unhappy, and his father accepted it as a part of life. Carter was assigned to the artillery and spent 17 weeks in training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. In the 13th week of training, he was surprised to be visited by his mother. His first time firing a gun, Carter qualified as an expert with a carbine [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic carbine]. He practiced often on the shooting range and disassembled and reassembled his weapon. Carter also trained on the 105mm howitzer [Annotator's Note: M2A1 105mm howitzer; standard light field howitzer]. The weapon fired various types of shells throughout the war, including the long-range shells that would travel six to seven miles, and armored piercing shells. He was also trained to level the barrel of the gun to directly fire at tanks. Later in the war, they brought in new shells, called proximity shells. They were electronic and designed to explode in the air and rain shrapnel on the enemy. Those were detrimental to the enemy because they could not get away from them. After completing training, he took a brief furlough [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] and went home. His family brought him to the train station as he was shipped to the staging area at Fort Meade, Maryland [Annotator's Note: Fort George Meade, Maryland]. He was divided into groups and boarded a train. They traveled up through east coast. He deboarded the train in Boston, Massachusetts and took a bus to Boston Harbor. He was shocked to see the harbor filled with LSTs [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank]. [Annotator's Note: A telephone rings in background at 0:26:06:000.] His group of 25 men boarded an LST to Europe. He slept on a bunk bed throughout his voyage. Carter spent 28 days aboard the slow moving LST, and was required to perform some Navy duties, including sweeping and painting the deck, KP duty [Annotator's Note: Kitchen Patrol], and watch duty. They first headed to Nova Scotia [Annotator's Note: Nova Scotia, Canada] where they were joined with other Navy vessels including an aircraft carrier, a cruiser, three destroyers, and Canadian corvettes [Annotator's Note: a corvette was a small, lightly armed Canadian warship used for anti-submarine warfare] and zig-zagged [Annotator's Note: a naval anti-submarine maneuver] across the Atlantic. Carter was seasick for all but one day. They had three submarine scares, but the captain was not worried about it because the size of the LST. Carter never saw any enemy U-boats [Annotator's Note: German for submarine].

Don Carter arrived in Falmouth, England, boarded a trained and went to Barry, Wales [Annotator's Note: Wales, England] for training. He received passes to go into town and the civilians were extremely nice. He went through an air raid. They had to go into a building, pull the curtains closed, and wait out the raid. That was the first time he heard enemy explosions. After training for several months, Carter was sent to Southampton [Annotator's Note: Southampton, England] in preparation for the invasion of Normandy [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944] where he was placed on a troopship with other replacement troops. As a replacement, Carter made an unconscious effort not to grow close to anyone as the reality of being split apart was very real. Carter and the rest of the artillerymen on the troopship watched the shore bombardment of Utah Beach [Annotator's Note: Utah Beach, Normandy, France] for two days. He watched the great big battleships firing off cannons onto the beaches, then rocking back and forth from the recoil. [Annotator's Note: A telephone rings in the background at 0:36:32:000.] Carter went ashore on two days after the initial D-day invasion [Annotator's Note: D plus two, or, 8 June 1944]. The replacements were put in foxholes in a field where Carter sat for another two days before being taken to join his squad in Sainte-Mère-Église [Annotator's Notes: Sainte-Mère-Église, France]. A truck drove up to the beach, someone hopped out and called his name. He went over, checked in, and got into the truck to take his to his assigned position. Upon arrival in Sainte-Mere-Eglise [Annotator's Note: Sainte-Mère-Église, France], Carter was delighted to see that he would be joining a self-propelled howitzer squad. He was assigned to Battery B, 44th Field Artillery Battalion, 4th Infantry Division. The gun was mounted on a tank chassis and Carter's days of digging gun pits were over. Carter spoke to Captain Paddock [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify] who assigned him to gun number two. Carter remained on this gun through the whole war. One man in the crew, from Brooklyn, New York, hated Carter the minute he arrived. Their personalities clashed, so they tried to stay apart from each other. Carter was put to work immediately unwrapping and loading shells onto the racks. Lieutenant John W. Young [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify] climbed aboard the tank for Carter's first combat experience to make sure he was well-trained on all three-gun stations. Young was impressed with his training and felt comfortable to let Carter be on his own. Carter was scared throughout the war but was most nervous for the first four or five days. Aside from being afraid of being killed, Carter was nervous around people who he had never known before or and not knowing of how well they were trained. The leaders and crew members expected Carter to jump in and do his part. No one made sure he was comfortable. He was expected to work, and he did. After two days, he was a dyed in the wool crew member.

On the twelfth day of combat, Don Carter's squad [Annotator's Note: in Battery B, 44th Field Artillery Battalion, 4th Infantry Division] entered the town square of Cherbourg [Annotator's Note: Cherbourg, France] on their tank. Carter saw a Nazi banner hanging off a building, so he told the tank [Annotator's Note: M7 Priest; 105mm Howitzer Motor Carriage M7; self-propelled artillery vehicle] driver, Rufus Angel [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify] from Louisiana, to drive to it. Carter pulled the banner down and rolled it up and stored it in the tank. He eventually shipped the banner back home to his mother in a wooden ammo box. Captain Paddock [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling] came over to Carter and told him that it probably would not make it home because all the mail is inspected by officers, and they will send it to their home instead. Carter addressed it and mailed it to his mother anyway. The banner made it back to the United States and was displayed in a department store window in Carter's hometown for many months. [Annotator's Note: There is a break in the video at 0:52:02.000.] After Cherbourg was captured, Carter's squad made their way to Saint-Lo [Annotator's Note: Saint-Lô, France] where they encountered some of the heaviest fighting of the war and took heavy casualties. He watched Allied fighters fly too close to the front lines and open fire killing high officials and staff. Though he did not know what happened at the time, he felt that something was wrong, as the planes had opened fire on friendly units. Carter does not know how true that story is, but that is what he heard and read. On one occasion, the M7s were out too far ahead of the column and were dive-bombed by several P-47s [Annotator's Note: Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter aircraft]. They moved fast towards Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France] and entered the city days before General De Gaulle [Annotator's Note: French Army General Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle; later President of France] and the accompanying fanfare. As De Gaulle moved in, Carter's squad was given orders to move out of Paris quickly so De Gaulle could claim the city. As they left and marched down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées [in Paris, France], Carter saw the Eiffel Tower and the Notre Dame Cathedral [Annotator's Notes: Notre-Dame de Paris]. For three or four days they settle at nearby town on the Seine River called Bondy [Annotator's Note: Bondy, France] where they performed much needed maintenance on their tanks. Carter enjoyed wine with the local population as they thanked the Americans for liberating them. They could only communicate through gestures of shaking hands, hugging, and patting backs because no one could speak each other's language. After a few days of rest, Carter's unit packed up and moved toward Luxembourg and Belgium to face the Germans again.

As the winter of 1944 arrived, Don Carter [Annotator's Note: with Battery B, 44th Field Artillery Battalion, 4th Infantry Division] moved south from Luxembourg into heavy fighting in Central France near Nancy [Annotator's Note: Nancy, France] and Metz [Annotator's Note: Metz, France]. During the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945], Carter was in position along the banks of the Moselle River. While on guard duty one night, a man in his squad, Gilbert Mill [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify], got drunk on a bottle of Calvados [Annotator's Note: apple or pear liquor] and abandoned his guard post. Carter and some others searched for Mill until he was found. When they brought him to the lieutenant, Mill punched him and knocked him to the ground. MPs [Annotator's Note: Military Police] arrived and arrested Mill. Two weeks later, Captain Paddock [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify] summoned Carter and the other men involved that night to his command car. They drove to a general court martial for Mill. Captain Paddock taught each man how to behave in testimony before entering the proceedings. One by one, each man testified, including the lieutenant and sergeant, against Mill. At the conclusion on the court martial, Carter and the rest of the men that testified were brought back into court. Mills was sentenced to 50 years in Leavenworth prison [Annotator's Note: Fort Leavenworth, Kansas] for six violations of the Army code of war including being drunk on duty, assaulting an officer, and aiding the enemy. Many years later, Carter met a woman from the Department of Justice who informed him that Mill had died in prison. Of all the poor weather conditions and lack of food during the Battle of the Bulge, the worst thing Carter experienced was running out of gas on several occasions. Tanks [Annotator's Note: Carter was a crewman on a M7 Priest; 105mm Howitzer Motor Carriage M7; self-propelled artillery vehicle] did not get good gas mileage, so it was often that several tanks would be sitting around waiting for gas. Luckily, they were never spotted by the enemy in this condition as they were sitting ducks for a devastating attack. A C-47 [Annotator's Note: Douglas C-47 Skytrain cargo aircraft] dropped cans of gasoline to the tank squad and they continued once more.

Don Carter's outfit's [Annotator's Note: Battery B, 44th Field Artillery Battalion, 4th Infantry Division] second lieutenant served as the forward observer, and, as a result, there was a high turnover rate at that position. They depended on Captain Paddock [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify] like a father. Following the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945], Paddock's command car hit a mine [Annotator's Note: stationary explosive device triggered by physical contact] and caused him to lose both of his legs. In addition, the driver was killed, and the radio operator was badly wounded. Carter never saw his captain again until about ten years after the war. He and his wife were in visiting Florida, and he was telling her about Captain Paddock. She told him to look him up in the phone book, which he did. He called the captain and he invited Carter and his wife to his house. He had a good time, and it was pleasant to catch up. Carter and his wife also stopped at his executive officer's house on the same trip. During World War 2, tree bursts in the dense Hurtgen Forest [Annotator's Note: Hürtgen Forest, Germany] caused many casualties. He was fortunate because he never got wounded. By the end of the war, Carter was a tank commander [Annotator's Note: of a M7 Priest; 105mm Howitzer Motor Carriage M7; self-propelled artillery vehicle] and credits his facility with algebra and geometry with his promotion. He used an aiming circle to train all the squad's guns onto a single position. Captain Paddock trusted him to line the guns up on several occasions. Carter's outfit crossed the Rhine River into Worms, Germany and found the German Headquarters there still occupied. Carter went into the commander's office and tore the Iron Cross [Annotator's Note: The Iron Cross is a famous German military medal dating back to the 19th century] from his neck. From Worms, they moved to Neumarkt [Annotator's Note: Neumarkt, Germany], near Nuremberg [Annotator's Note: Nuremberg, Germany], where they liberated a concentration camp nearby. This is the worst memory of his life. The men, women, and children lived in total squalor. One man drove a tank through the gates of the camp, allowing everyone inside to escape. The man got into a lot of trouble with a colonel because the protocol was to tend to the internees first and see if they need medical help before letting them go. He saw a little pond in the center of the camp. Many of the internees were washing their clothes in the pond. Many of the people were dirty and their clothes were all torn.

Word of the German surrender reached Don Carter. The end of the war signals its most dangerous phase as, although the winner knows it is over, the loser does not and continues to fight fanatically. Many guys were killed in the days following the surrender and many convoys were ambushed. With the sense of happiness and relief, Carter became a member of the occupation force and set to work patrolling streets trying to find any SS [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization] troops who had hidden themselves among the German civilians. Not long after, he was alerted for service in Japan where the 4th Division [Annotator's Note: 4th Infantry Division] was set to lead the invasion into Tokyo [Annotator's Note: Tokyo, Japan]. He sailed back to the United States and received a hero's welcome upon arriving in New York City [Annotator's Note: New York, New York]. After a 30 day furlough [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time], Carter boarded a train again, this time heading to North Carolina. While going through Binghamton, New York, people ran alongside the windows with newspapers proclaiming the surrender of the Japanese. He found out later that the orders of the 4th Division would be to lead the invasion in Japan. The train stopped in Newark, New Jersey, and Carter deboarded with some other guys to change trains. For the only time in his military career, Carter went AWOL [Annotator's Note: absent without leave] and spent VJ-Day [Annotator's Note: Victory Over Japan Day, 15 August 1945] and that night celebrating in Times Square [Annotator's Note: Times Square in New York, New York]. They also found a USO [Annotator's Note: United Service Organizations] and slept on a cot. He and some other guys reported for duty in North Carolina a day late and were not disciplined, some 200 other guys had done the same thing. They were set to work mothballing the camp and preparing for it to close. He was discharged as a sergeant two months later on 31 October 1945. His girlfriend was studying to be a nurse when he returned home. Because his father sat him down and encouraged him to get an education before starting a career, Carter had no trouble readjusting to civilian life. He visited various campuses in in upstate New York. He decided to attend the University of Buffalo [Annotator's Note: in Buffalo, New York] on the G.I. Bill [Annotator's Note: the G.I. Bill, or Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was enacted by the United States Congress to aid United States veterans of World War 2 in transitioning back to civilian life and included financial aid for education, mortgages, business starts and unemployment]. The university required him to come to school early before the semester began to review his high school subjects. Carter began his college career in pre-dental but decided to go into sales. He went to work for Bausch and Lomb [Annotator's Note: Bausch + Lomb, Canadian eye health company] after graduating college. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer interrupts interviewee and there is a break in the video at 1:49:43.000.]

Don Carter's most memorable experience of World War 2 is the invasion [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. Carter saw Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] three times. The war changed his life dramatically. He grew up awfully fast. He would have never gone to college without his training in the military and he would not have been able to afford it if it was not for the G.I. Bill [Annotator's Note: the G.I. Bill, or Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was enacted by the United States Congress to aid United States veterans of World War 2 in transitioning back to civilian life and included financial aid for education, mortgages, business starts and unemployment]. He also would not have had his job with Bausch and Lomb [Annotator's Note: Bausch + Lomb, Canadian eye health company]. He fought in World War 2 because the government told him to. He was drafted in a combat position and sent to a combat zone. His service means everything to him today. He would not have anything he has now if it was not for the service. He received his education and experiences because of his military service. He learned how to get along with people and learn to do things that you do not really want to do. He worked in the sales department for Bausch and Lomb as a regional and then national manager. Working in that field, you have to know how to direct people. He did a good job at raising his two children because he is a modest person. Carter thinks America did not learn enough from World War 2. He believes that the challenges the country has today will be difficult to overcome. He thinks the President's administration [Annotator's Note: at the time of this interview] had made some bad policies, especially with the nation's border. He believes that the administration is going to wreck this country. He believes there should be institutions like The National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana], and we should continue to teach World War 2 to future generations and learn from our mistakes, and how we overcame it. He questions why we continued to go into more wars, like Vietnam [Annotator's Note: Vietnam War, or Second Indochina War, 1 November 1955 to 30 April 1975] and the current situation in Afghanistan [Annotator's Note: War in Afghanistan, Operation Enduring Freedom, 2001 to 2014, Operation Freedom's Sentinel, 2015 to September 2021]. We cannot solve all the world's problems because we are on the verge of reckoning our own country.