Born 29 Jan 22, the oldest of 5 children of Houston Lee Braly, Sr. and Vonna V. (Quick) Braly. P-51 fighter pilot in WWII. Took off from Honington, UK on August 2, 1944. Attacked a German train parked by the town of Remy. The train contained highly explosive material and the resulting blast severely damaged the town and blew out all of the church windows. His body was pulled from the wreckage by the villagers and buried in the cemetery of the church, constantly covered with flowers until he was exhumed and returned to his hometown.

From The NY Times, 2000 Article: Church Windows Memorialize U.S. Pilot : Village's Enduring French-American Bond

By Joseph Fitchett, International Herald Tribune July 29, 2000
PARIS— On Aug. 2, 1944, as Allied troops were fighting through northern France on their way to liberating Paris, a 22-year-old fighter pilot from Texas led a strafing run against a German military train that was halted at the town of Remy under heavy camouflage.
The attack hit paydirt — carloads of highly explosive war materials. But the blast, which hurled parts of the railroad into the sky, damaged Lieutenant Houston Lee Braly's P-51 fighter, which crashed through a brick wall and set a house on fire.
Rushing past their damaged homes and shops, the villagers braved the flames and exploding ammunition and dragged the dead pilot from the wreckage. Then they heaped the body with flowers, defying German reprisal threats.
"They did it because they saw the American as a martyr for our cause, one that they felt sure was going to win, and they wanted the Germans to know how they felt," recalls a descendant of a villager. Now, more than a half-century later, some Americans want to show their appreciation. Although the village has been largely rebuilt, its 13th-century church has never had the means to replace the 700-year-old stained-glass windows that were blown out by the explosion. On Saturday, a project officially known as "Windows for Remy" reaches its official climax with the consecration of $200,000 worth of new stained-glass panels paid for with tax-free contributions by hundreds of American donors.
This lingering French-American bond was discovered by Stephen Lea Vell, a military aviation buff, when he rode a bike into Remy six years ago during the commemoration of the liberation of Paris and met the villagers.
Upon his return to the United States, Mr. Lea Vell, then a 57-year-old pilot for United Airlines, told and retold the story of the villagers. The story had hit him particularly hard because, as a pilot flying frequent trans-Atlantic routes, he was irritated by what he saw as knee-jerk anti-French attitudes that seemed to be spreading in the United States and even in media reporting of France.
In Remy he had found that wartime memories had never died, and in the United States he found Americans wanting to do something in return.
Veterans of Lieutenant Braly's unit, the 383d Fighter Squadron of the U.S. 8th Air Force, were particularly moved, but they hesitated to act. Why single out Remy? they asked. After all, many people in occupied Europe had helped the Allies. But they eventually decided that Remy would symbolize all the communities in France and surrounding countries who helped rescue Allied airmen in World War II.
Done by French artisans after the villagers voted on designs, the rose-window and six other panels depict the story of St. Denis, the patron saint of France, a martyr who was beheaded and then carried his own head into the grave to wait for resurrection day. At the foot of one window, a small script, which the villagers did not let the American donors see until the window was finished, dedicates the memorial to the dead airman.
Around the religious ceremony on Saturday, Remy will live a day of military honors, including a special U.S. Air Force fly-by, and an evening of French-American wining-dining.
A key guest of honor is Roy Blaha, 79, the wingman (and best friend) of the lost pilot. Limping back to base in England in a damaged craft, Mr. Blaha had to be pried out of his cockpit with crowbars because the fuselage had been badly bent in the blast.
Also on hand will be directors of the nonprofit committee of the Remy project, most of them veterans of the 383d and several of them men who were shot down and saved by partisans. The project has brought them back together: Manuel Casagrande, retired owner of a produce business in California; Elmer Giery, retired head of a Virginia pharmaceuticals company; Paul Goldberg, an air force officer retired in Illinois; Gordon McCoy, retired California banker; Brad McManus, a realtor in Pennsylvania; Clyde Voss, a retired Northrop aircraft executive in California.
The heroine on the French side is Nicole Quertelet, 91, widow of a roofer she met after World War I. (Her husband came to help reroof the church in Remy, located in flat country near Compiegne that was a battleground in both of this century's major European conflicts.)
After defying the Germans over the American airman's body, she worked secretly over the next few weeks to make three flags using bedding materials she had managed to hide from the Germans. (They had stripped local houses of anything useful to send home before retreating.) She made a Free French flag showing the Cross of Lorraine and a Canadian flag — many Canadians are buried in the local war graves from trench fighting there in the 1914-18 conflict.
The third flag was an American flag, which she carried in September 1944 as she ran to the edge of town to greet the first American troops on their arrival. The day before, a young man from Remy had raced through the village shouting, "The Americans are coming," and been shot dead by German soldiers. Her handmade flag could have earned her a similar fate.
For decades after the war, the Remy story was forgotten outside the village until the day when Mr. Lea Vell ran across a photograph taken after the front lines moved over Remy by a U.S. intelligence officer and sent to the 383d Squadron. It showed a grave marked by a fighter prop, in fact, the blade salvaged from Lieutenant Braly's plane to mark his initial grave. The story drew Mr. Lea Vell to the village, starting the project culminating this weekend.
In the process, the Americans had to learn some French ways of doing business, motivating public support and lobbying government bureaucrats. Mr. Lea Vell sees the experience as a salutary exchange: "You learn that our differences are relative. We could learn sometimes from the way they do things. What matters is how much we French and Americans share and can accomplish together."
The French participants seem to agree. Struggling to her feet to greet him this week in Remy, Mrs. Quertelet took Mr. Lea Vell, 63, by the shoulders and spoke to him briefly, through an interpreter. Her emotion too old for tears, she said simply: "I always knew you would come."
She seemed to be alluding to the Allied landing and eventual liberation. But Mr. Lea Vell evoked a longer perspective.
"All our grandchildren will see the windows and be proud that their ancestors did something to show how French and Americans can work together for right cause," he said.