Charles Russell “Russ” Barnett was a member of what journalist Tom Brokaw called The Greatest Generation. A son of Irvington, Russ served in the best tradition as a citizen warrior — marine, sailor, and soldier.
At the end of his freshman year at Butler University, Russell enlisted in the United States Marine Corps Reserve as a private in June 1939, and was assigned to the headquarters company, 16th battalion which was located at Tomlinson Hall at the northeast corner of Delaware and Market streets. Private Barnett received his basic training at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station and then began attending weekly Monday night drills while preparing to resume his studies at Butler University. However, in September his father became ill and had to retire from the railroad. To help support his parents and his younger brother, Russell quit college and got a job as a coremaker earning $37.50 (2020: $710) a week at the International Harvester Foundry, located south of Irvington along Brookville Road. He continued with his weekly reserve drills, and in the summer of 1940 attended two weeks of summer camp at the Quantico, Virginia Marine Base. With his continuing responsibilities to provide for his parents and brother, Russell sought a deferment in January 1941 from active duty with the Marine Corps and was honorably discharged from the service on March 3, 1941.
With the end of his military service, Russell concentrated on helping to provide for his parents and brother. He also married and settled into the role of a devoted husband, son, and brother which all would change on December 7, 1941.
In the weeks following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Russell and his wife Henrietta talked about him joining “the fight,” a decision she would have to agree to since her permission would be required. She said “No” to him re-joining the Marines, and she also nixed him enlisting into the Army or Army Air Corps. Finally, Henrietta reluctantly said, “Yes” to Russell enlisting in the Navy which he did on February 27, 1942. He later wrote in his diary, “April 1, 1942, Wednesday. I left home and my darling wife for San Diego to become a sailor.”
After boot camp, Russell reported for duty on June 6, 1942 aboard the light cruiser USS Boise in San Francisco. Sixteen days later, the Boise, with Russell on board, sailed beneath the Golden Gate Bridge and into the Pacific Ocean escorting a convoy to New Zealand. When this mission was completed, the Boise steamed to Pearl Harbor, but was only in port briefly before leaving on a reconnaissance mission that would take the ship within five hundred miles of the coast of Japan.
Returning to Pearl, the Boise moored near Battleship Row within sight of the capsized Oklahoma and beyond it loomed the towering super structure over the sunken wreckage of the Arizona. While in port, Russell attended radar school and enjoyed the pleasures of Waikiki Beach. He continued training in radar plot on board the Boise as it escorted a convoy to the New Hebrides, stopping first at Efate before going to Espiritu Santo — a “jumping off point for the Solomons.”
Boise conducted night battle exercises with the cruisers San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and Helena along with destroyers Duncan, McCalla, Farenholt, Buchanan, and Laffey. These ships made up Task Force Sugar under the command of Rear Admiral Norman Scott. On October 7, 1942, the task force steamed from Espiritu Santo to “search for and destroy enemy ships and landing craft” in the vicinity of Savo Island off Guadalcanal’s Cape Esperance.
In the waning minutes of October 11, 1942, a hot tropical night as dark as ebony, in Boise’s radar plot room Russell spotted a group of objects 14,000 yards distant. The assistant navigator questioned whether the “objects were islands.” Russell replied, “If they are islands, they’re moving at 20 knots.” The “objects” were two cruisers and six destroyers of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Boise’s Captain Edward J. “Mike” Moran gave the order to “pick out the biggest” and commence firing, almost instantaneously joining Salt Lake City and Helena in concentrating their radar controlled main batteries on the enemy ships. Within minutes, three Japanese ships had been sunk. Boise then fired on an enemy cruiser which began burning brightly, but before sinking the target had fired 8-inch and 5-inch shells which slammed into the Boise. Fires burning on her decks and with three of her four gun-turrets wrecked by explosions, the Boise began listing as the sea rushed through gaping shell-holes below the water line. Valiantly, the ship’s damage control crew was able to douse the fires and plug the holes with mattresses to keep the Boise afloat. The grim task of recovering the 107 dead sailors from the turrets began before dawn. Russell helped with this grisly job, “but soon found I couldn’t stomach it.” He later “helped to take some more bodies out and other clean-up.”
In a solemn ceremony, the officers and crew of the Boise buried their fellow shipmates, who had made the ultimate sacrifice, at sea. Temporary repairs were made at New Caledonia before the cruiser made way for the distant Philadelphia Navy Yard. Eluding Japanese submarines, and once through the Panama Canal avoiding detection by Nazi U-boats lurking beneath the waves, the Boise heralded as the “one-ship Navy” for sinking six Japanese warships in twenty-seven minutes, arrived triumphantly in Philadelphia on November 19, 1942. The ship and crew received a hero’s welcome, the Navy Yard band playing “Anchors Aweigh” and Admiral Ernest J. King, commander in chief of the fleet, personally greeted and congratulated the officers and crew of the Boise. Newsreels showed “Battle Scarred U. S. S. Boise Returns from Pacific!” and later the Boise’s heroic exploits were recounted in a book, Pick Out the Biggest. Families in and around Philadelphia invited Boise crew members to Thanksgiving dinner. Russell and a shipmate had Thanksgiving with a family who owned a horse farm, and after dinner they were outfitted in riding clothes and spent the rest of the day horseback riding.
After months of repair and overhaul, the Boise was ready to rejoin the fleet, leaving Norfolk, Virginia on June 8, 1943 for the Mediterranean where she supported the Allied invasion of Sicily and Italy. The following year found the Boise back in the Pacific taking part in operations along the north coast of New Guinea before advancing to the Philippines and taking part in the invasion of Leyte and the Battle of Surigao Strait, the largest naval battle in history.
Russell returned to the United States at war’s end and resumed his civilian life. However, his military service was not over; he joined the Army Reserve attaining the rank of chief warrant officer. Russell Barnett was the best example of a citizen warrior; he was my dad.
