Donald Witmer was born an only child in September 1924 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. His mother died when he was 18 months old, and he was raised by his father and an aunt and uncle. He grew up through the Great Depression years, and remembers long lines of people waiting for food, and while most people were out of work, Witmer's father was able to manage the upkeep of his family. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, Witmer was a senior in high school, and he said it was not a "great major surprise." He felt the country was on a war footing, even though the United States was still neutral. Witmer was already registered in the selective service when he graduated, and tried to enlist in the Navy, but found that the enlistments were closed because of limited training space. His father, who had been in the Army in World War 1, warned him against joining the Army, and when it was later announced in the newspaper that a limited number of spaces in the Navy would shortly be open, Witmer skipped work, went to the recruitment office, and was selected. He was inducted in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and reported to Sampson, New York for boot camp. Witmer remembers it was very cold, and when the barracks decks were swabbed [Annotator's Note: naval slang for mopped], they would ice over.

After boot camp, Donald Witmer was designated for torpedo school, which was not among his choices for assignment. In hindsight, he said, it was a fortunate path, because it helped prepare him for his postwar career in the pneumatic aspects of the petrochemical industry. Torpedo school was in Newport, Rhode Island, and after graduating he declined the opportunity to go into officers' training. Instead he went into advanced torpedo training in San Diego, California. It was his favorite time in his service career. Witmer was part of a retrieval crew that would go out in a whale boat and tow practice torpedoes back to the "mother ship," bring them to base, clean them of salt water, tear them down and overhaul them. After completing his course as a Second Class Torpedoman, Witmer was assigned to a destroyer out of Norfolk, Virginia, the USS Twiggs (DD-591). While waiting for the ship's completion, he went to classes, including hedgehog [Annotator's Note: a multiple-fire anti-submarine rocket launcher] classes, which was not a feature on the ship he would be boarding, and Witmer cut all those classes after the first. About a week before the Navy took over the ship, Witmer and other crew members were sent to the Charleston, South Carolina shipyard where he became a "plank owner," which meant he was there when the commissioning took place.

Donald Witmer was on the USS Twiggs (DD-591) for its shakedown cruise to Bermuda. It was Christmas of 1943, and Witmer looked forward to leave in Bermuda, but found everything in town shuttered for the holiday. After the shakedown, he went back to Norfolk, Virginia for further acclimation on the new ship. The Twiggs went along with "Big Ben", the USS Franklin (CV-13), through the Panama Canal. Gatun Lake gave the sailors an opportunity to bathe and wash their clothes in fresh water. Witmer said the Franklin was a tight fit through the locks. He was scheduled for liberty on the Pacific side of the canal, but someone on the ship had measles, and the ship was under quarantine. The Twiggs sailed alongside the Franklin up to San Diego, California, then took off to escort the big carrier to Pearl Harbor.

After Pearl Harbor, Donald Witmer's next destination was Eniwetok Atoll. When they arrived, there were no Japanese around, and the island was pretty pristine; Witmer remembers that when the Twiggs dropped anchor, the water was clear all the way to the sea bottom. Then the fleet arrived, there were ships all over, and the water became so polluted that he could see only one or two links on the anchor chain. The USS Twiggs (DD-591) was employed carrying mail to Guam, Saipan and the Leyte area while there was still fighting going on, but did not get into combat at that time. Preparations began for the invasion of the Philippines, and Witmer remembers going south, past Truk, to cross the equator. He went through quite a ceremony, essentially a hazing, to graduate from a Pollywog [Annotator's Note: naval slang for one who hadn’t yet crossed the equator] to a Shellback [Annotator's Note: naval slang for one who has already crossed the equator]. The ship was bound for Manus, and while the Navy was getting the invasion fleet ready there, the USS Mount Hood (AE-11) blew up. Witmer said it was the closest thing to an atomic bomb, it had a comparable plume of smoke, that he ever wanted to see. Debris from the explosion blew over top of Witmer's ship [Annotator's Note: USS Twiggs (DD-591)], which was over a mile away, and he took cover under a torpedo. Then, Witmer remembers, the crew had liberty on a recreational island that was set aside for the military. They had beer and hot dogs, swimming and volleyball, and although there were no girls, it was fun and memorable. In October, they set off for the invasion of Leyte Island. There were quite a few fighting ships in convoy, and they survived a few air raids, without real damage, until the Canadian cruiser HMAS Canberra (D33) was hit. Later, the Twiggs was alongside one of the first ships hit by a Kamikaze, the USS Haraden (DD-585). Witmer helped take off the injured personnel. Next, the Twiggs was one of three destroyers that participated in the invasion of Panay, one of which was hit and subsequently had to be destroyed to prevent it from becoming a navigational hazard.

Donald Witmer said the Japanese decided on a last-gasp attempt at interrupting the invasion of Leyte with three prongs of attack: through the Surigao Strait, the Mindoro Strait, and the other a ploy to lure away the carrier fleet, the last of which worked. The other two prongs failed, and the Japanese ships were decimated with torpedo attacks and naval gunfire. The USS Twiggs (DD-591) was north of this action, protecting vessels that were unloading on the beach. The Twiggs finally escorted the surviving fleet back to Manus, where it refueled and replenished, then went on to Iwo Jima. Witmer arrived three days before the invasion, and the old battlewagons were pouring munitions onto the shore, in concert with the B-29 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] bombers dropping "beaucoups" bombs all over the island. Witmer said it was really something to see. The Twiggs supported the landings, going in closer than acceptable, to try to neutralize the Japanese fire. The Marines had a really difficult time there, according to Witmer, but eventually they prevailed. After the battle, the Twiggs was in the line of fire of one remaining bogey, and although the crew didn't fire on it, or take any evasive action, the plane crashed into the water nearby. The ship was then made ready for the invasion of Okinawa. The Twiggs arrived seven days before the assault. Its major task all through the campaign was to bombard the shorelines, and Witmer said it was pretty effective. After the invasion began, the ship came under aerial attack, and he said there was an incredible amount of indiscriminate antiaircraft fire let loose into the skies, and the Twiggs survived.

The USS Twiggs (DD-591), according to Donald Witmer, was then assigned to Roger Peter 2, a radar picket station, which came under heavy aerial bombardment. Station 2 was on a direct line between Okinawa and the mainland of Japan, a hot corner. The Twiggs was the fighter director for some of the aircraft on and around the station, and it sometimes got tricky. It was a dreadful assignment, there were 12 destroyers sunk, and countless damaged during this duty. On their first three-day tour, the Twiggs got through without a scratch. But on the second three-day assignment, notwithstanding a very successful run in terms of enemy planes destroyed, she was hit by a Kamikaze which put a nasty gash in the bow and killed 18 and wounded many more. Witmer had three distinct general quarters stations: one for antiaircraft, another for torpedo attacks, and the third for submarine warfare. For antiaircraft, he passed ammunition up to a 40mm gun. The plane crashed just a few feet away from him. The Twiggs was still under power, and limped back to Kerama Retto for a month of patch-up, then went back onto the picket line.

Donald Witmer recalls that toward the end of the campaign [Annotator's Note: the Okinawa Campaign], scuttlebutt had it that the USS Twiggs (DD-591) was to go back to the States for a refit. The skipper decided to offload the ammunition by firing it at the beach; unfortunately the fire was returned, and the ship took a torpedo that blew up the Number 1 and Number 2 magazines immediately. Witmer said he felt like he was caught in a coal slide; he heard a roaring sound and was knocked out for a time, and when he woke he felt trapped. He called for help, but nobody answered. The officer of the deck was trapped as well, and on fire, and attempted suicide to get some relief. [Annotator's Note: Witmer cries as he remembers that it is the anniversary of the explosion.] Once he could assess his condition, Witmer realized he had a broken leg, but figured out how to get free. He looked over and saw burned bodies among the embers. He slithered out, and reached a clear area on the torpedo deck. There he met a seaman who had stayed behind, and was trying to help others. The guy gave Witmer a life preserver and helped him down to the main deck. The abandon ship call never came, but the ship was sinking. Witmer said he didn't have to jump because the water came up to him. He got off the ship, and a distance away, when the ship had another major explosion, took a heave, and sank. The water caught fire and Witmer, remembering his training for such an incident, avoided being burned. He heard a swishing sound, and saw a destroyer coming right at him. He yelled and they yelled, and somebody threw him a line [Annotator's Note: naval term for a rope] that he couldn't reach. The ship was steered away, and he never saw it again.

Donald Witmer didn't know what his fate would be. He thought he was drifting toward the beach, one that was held by the Japanese, and it seemed like quite a while before he heard the engine of a motor whale boat. He was plucked from the water and flopped into the bilges of the boat. By this time his leg was starting to really hurt, and he laid in the bottom of the boat until the boat reached the USS Putnam (DD-757). He boarded by way of a cargo net, and was soon under the doctor's care. He was transferred to an "ambulance ship," had his leg put in a cast, then moved to a hospital ship, where he was put in a body cast. The ship was moved to Guam, where Witmer got another change of cast, and after about a week, he was flown back to Pearl Harbor. Once more his cast was changed, and he was flown to Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. He was relieved at this point to have his hair washed, and to get a survivor kit from the Red Cross that contained a toothbrush and toothpaste. Witmer said he finally started feeling like a human being again. From there he went to Seattle, and the war was over shortly after his arrival. Although his leg didn't heal as well as had been hoped, he was sent on a hospital train, on crutches, back home to Philadelphia. [Annotator's Note: Witmer still has a limp.] He was given a medical discharge, at the rank of Torpedoman 2nd Class. Witmer went back to work with Armstrong as a clock and instrument man, taking care of process control equipment in the company's plants in the United States, Canada and England.