Russell Brien was 16 years old when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor but he does not know exactly where he was. He graduated from high school at 16 and went to work at the blimp base [Annotator's Note: Naval Air Station Houma in Houma, Louisiana; an anti-submarine warfare base] for an engineer. They were making the landing platforms. The blimps would go out over the Gulf of Mexico. There were German submarines out there. U-606 [Annotator's Note: U-166] was sunk. He worked for Williams and Williams for about a year or so before he signed up for the service. The man he was working for told him he did not have to go in the service and that he could keep Brien out of the service. The company was going to Corpus Christi, Texas to build more blimp fields and it was part of the war effort. Brien turned him down and told him, "no sir, I want to fly." He volunteered in New Orleans, Louisiana but failed his first exam. He tested again later and passed. He went to Camp Beauregard [Annotator's Note: in Pineville, Louisiana] and Sheppard Field [Annotator's Note: now Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita County, Texas] for basic training. He then went to Lubbock, Texas to Texas Tech [Annotator's Note: Texas Technological College, now Texas Tech University] for three months of college in math and basic subjects. He considered it advanced high school. He did not do well in trigonometry. He went to California for preflight training and then he was told he was being eliminated. He was given a choice of going into any branch of service and he stayed in the Army Air Forces. He went to Yuma, Arizona for more basic and gunnery training. He was there for quite a while. It was very hot and there were rattlesnakes everywhere. They went to California for distribution and he was worried he was being sent to the Pacific. He worried about facing the Japanese. The crews were split right down the middle and his crew went to Europe. He went by train to Norfolk, Virginia and then got leave. When his leave was up, he boarded a ship in Norfolk and crossed the North Atlantic in a convoy. They were stacked in the lower decks. It smelled really bad due to men getting sick. They landed in Naples, Italy. The boardwalks off the ship went across sunken ships. He was assigned to the 464th Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force [Annotator's Note: 776th Bombardment Squadron, 464th Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force]. His crew was put in charge of baggage when they got to the rail station. They ended up at Pantanella, Italy [Annotator's Note: the Pantanella Airfield was part of the Foggia Airfield Complex in Foggia, Italy]. There were not enough tents for everyone. The Staff Sergeant in charge told them to wait until the mission came back. If a crew did not return, they could take their tent. He later told them that another bomb group across the way had extra tents they could go ask for one. Brien, who was the nose gunner, Richardson, the waist gunner, and Quinlan, the ball turret gunner went over and stole a tent. There were six men per tent: nose gunner, radio operator, engineer, waist gunner, ball turret gunner and tail gunner. In another tent were the four officers: the pilot, co-pilot, navigator and bombardier. They made their own heaters out of oil drums, gasoline and oxygen bottles.

Russell Brien was born in June 1925 in Houma, Louisiana. His father was a sugar cane farmer and Brien would run to the fields to ride the mule slides when he came home from school. His father would only let him ride with team leader, Eddie Ruffin. Ruffin was a black man and Brien's father told the children that he was Mister Eddie to them. They kept the farm through the Great Depression. Brien raised all forms of poultry. He took agriculture in school and was taught how caponize [Annotator's Note: a Capon is a rooster, or cockerel, that has been castrated] a rooster by his teacher. This makes the rooster grow larger. He had 120 roosters, one weighed 12 pounds. [Annotator's Note: Brien describes the process in detail.] He raised them to eat. They did not want to kill the hens so that they had eggs to eat and sell. They also raised corn and peas. The corn was mostly for the mules to eat. Brien would help his mother preserve the vegetables for the winter. His childhood was very busy.

Russell Brien was at the Foggia Airfield [Annotator's Note: the Pantanella Airfield was part of the Foggia Airfield Complex, Foggia, Italy]. They had hot meals at the base but food bars on the flights. [Annotator's Note: Brien served as a nose gunner in the 776th Bombardment Squadron, 464th Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force.] Brien said their first three missions were flown at night with no fighter escorts dropping propaganda leaflets. All three missions were aborted, so he did not get credit for them. His first combat mission was in December 1944. They had landed in Naples, Italy on the previous Thanksgiving Day [Annotator's Note: 23 November 1944]. They built an entertainment building with the Italians where they could have drinks and got wine from the village. The individual weekly ration was three cans of Acme beer and some Coca-Cola. On his second or third mission, they were shot up pretty badly. It became routine. There pilot, Bob Houser, was a number one pilot. So was the navigator. Missions were flown in 28 boxes of eight planes per box. After a few missions, they flew alternate lead, which meant they would become the lead aircraft if the first lead was lost. When they were flying alternate lead, Russell would control the bomb drop on the bombardier's signal. He recalls bombing an airfield in Austria and he saw P-38s [Annotator's Note: Lockheed P-38 Lighterning fighter aircraft] strafing down below. His crew bombed oil refineries, marshalling yards and bridges. Often these were alternate targets in case of foul weather over the main target. They would be briefed around four o'clock in the morning after breakfast. Axis Sally [Annotator's Note: Rita Luisa Zucca; Italian-American radio announcer who broadcast Axis propaganda in Italy and North Africa; renounced her citizenship to save her family’s property in Italy; tried in Italy for collaboration; spent 9 months in prison; barred from entering the United States] was always on the radio and they would get riled up over it. That was her job. He carried his job out too.

On Russell Brien's third mission his aircraft lost an engine. [Annotator's Note: Brien was a nose gunner on Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bombers in the 776th Bombardment Squadron, 464th Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force.] They had 38 holes in their aircraft when they landed. He saw a fighter plane hitting a bomber about 1,000 yards away from him. The German pilots were looking for stragglers to shoot down. Brien's crew came back. His bombardier has a small cut across his forehead, and he did not even realize it. Their flight suits were pretty heavy. Most missions lasted six to eight hours. His longest was nine hours. He has lost a lot of his stuff. Bob Housen [Annotator’s Note: US Army Air Forces First Lieutenant Robert Housen] was his pilot and he had come from a dairy farm in Wisconsin. Easy missions were called milk runs. Housen had written his grandmother that he had been on a milk run and she wrote back that she did not know he was delivering milk to the Germans. A crewman wrote "Bob Housen and his Milkmen" on their aircraft, which made Housen angry. He ordered it removed. [Annotator's Note: Brien laughs.] It stuck as their nickname. Russell liked the B-24 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] and thought everything he heard negative about it was wrong. The 15th Air Force did have some B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] and Russell would see some off in the distance sometimes, but he did not know where they were stationed. Brien was in the nose turret and he could see planes all over the sky. He knew the war was changing after his 25th mission. He went to the Isle of Capri, Italy for rest and then was called back for all-out bombing. He returned there after the war. He met a girl there. The girl had relatives in New Iberia, Louisiana but he never looked them up.

Russell Brien left Italy in May after the war in Europe had finished. He ended up in Bangor, Maine. He was supposed to go train on B-52s [Annotator's Note: He means Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] for the Pacific. He went instead to Miami Beach, Florida. The rich people there were having parties for the returning airman. He was treated like a king there. He met his first wife there. She was in the Air Force there. She was from Houma, Louisiana as well as Brien. She tried to get him into Keesler [Annotator's Note: now Keesler Air Force Base, Biloxi, Mississippi] but the closest to Louisiana was in San Antonio, Texas. While there, Brien did engineering work at Randolph Field [Annotator's Note: now Randolph Air Force Base, Universal City, Texas]. He was discharged in October 1945. They offered to keep him in, give him a promotion, and send him to pilot training. He thought about it. He would have gotten a big pay raise. Flying got him extra pay. He returned to Houma. He surprised his parents. He had grown a beard and mustache. He kept the mustache. His sister told him to shave when she saw it. He had no trouble adjusting. He stayed on the farm a lot at first. He went to SULA College [Annotator's Note: Cannot locate a college of this name] and used the G.I. Bill to take some classes. He rented a room near the school from a nice German woman. He finished after two years and he went to work for Texaco as a radio operator and clerk. His father wanted him to return to the farm and talked him into it. In the meantime, some property needed farming nearby. Brien, his father, and cousin started farming it, raising sugar cane. He did that for 30 years before the land was sold out from under him. Sugar cane has to be refined quickly, it has to go to the refinery within a day. In the 1800s, each plantation had their own sugar mill. Brien thinks The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana is the best museum and the best thing that ever happened to Louisiana. He hopes the museum will continue to teach the war and its lessons to the young. It is a tribute to his service.