Eugene Henry DeBruin (April 1, 1933 – c. 1968) was a former U.S. Air Force staff sergeant who disappeared after an escape attempt from a prison camp in Laos during the Vietnam War.

[2] In 2017, his name, alongside fellow prisoners Dengler and Duane W. Martin, and two others, was added to a permanent exhibit on the USS Turner Joy, now housed in a Bremerton, Washington museum.

[citation needed] After being discharged from the Air Force, DeBruin enrolled at the University of Montana, where he earned a bachelor's degree in forestry.

[citation needed] On September 5, 1963, during one of his flights over Laos with Air America, DeBruin's C-46 cargo airliner was shot down by ground fire[1][12][13][7] during a transportation mission with Americans Joseph C. Cheney II, Charles G. Herrick; Thai citizens Phisit Intharathat, Prasit Promsuwan, and Prasit Thanee; and Chinese national To Yick Chiu.

[14][15] Cheney and Herrick were killed[citation needed] and DeBruin, To, Intharathat, Promsuwan, and Thanee were captured by the Pathet Lao.

[citation needed] In 1993, an editor from the Tampa Bay Times wrote that the US Department of State told her Laotian government officials claimed DeBruin was killed in 1982 during another escape attempt.

[19][10] Herzog later acknowledged that DeBruin acted heroically during his imprisonment but defended his choices, saying he took "artistic liberty" based in part on conversations with Dengler years before about the "antagonistic relationships among the prisoners when under extreme duress.