COMMENTARY
By Troy Turner
OPELIKA, Alabama — Boody was about to turn 98 years old when I met him in 2018, and he looked like he still could climb into the bombardier’s seat of a B-24 bomber just like he did during World War II on clandestine missions far behind enemy lines.
His secret to a long and healthy life?
It’s just that, he said with a grin, a secret; and the U.S. government gave him a medal that year in a Congressional ceremony for being good at keeping secrets.
Orrin “Boody” Brown Jr., an Auburn University alumnus, lifelong Opelika resident, and a recipient of medals for valor from multiple countries grateful for his service, passed away in his sleep Tuesday night at the age of 105.
Kate Asbury Larkin, who grew up knowing Boody all her life, shared the news of his passing with me in a text Wednesday morning.
My keyboard came to a stop as I reflected on my own time with Boody, a man with whom I enjoyed one of my favorite interviews.
The following is from portions of Boody’s story and the conversations we shared.
Troy Turner, left, during an interview with World War II veteran “Boody” Brown.
Background
Before there was a CIA working for America, there was an OSS.
Before there were Navy SEALS, Army Green Berets, Marine Raiders or any other kind of American special ops teams, there was the OSS.
The Office of Strategic Services was established in 1942 during World War II and was the direct predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency, created in 1947.
Because OSS missions were declared Top Secret, it wasn’t until 50 years after the fighting ended that Boody could tell his family and friends what he did during the war.
From Auburn to the warfront
If you asked Boody about attending Auburn in his younger days, he would smile and correct you.
“API,” he would say with a grin.
That would be Alabama Polytechnic Institute, which was an earlier name for Auburn University when Boody graduated there way back in the summer of 1941.
(Auburn University photo)
Boody earned a degree in aeronautical administration. He applied and was approved by the military for the aviation cadet program, eventually becoming commissioned as an officer and being assigned to bombardier duty in charge of dropping bombs and payloads from bombers.
His first duty station was in North Carolina, where he was assigned to a squadron that patrolled the coast hunting for enemy submarines and escorting allied ships.
They flew antiquated Lockheed 829s, an older plane that didn’t impress Boody.
Then in early June 1943, things began to change. “We somehow had our aircraft replaced by the B-24Ds,” he said, as if still surprised while talking about it almost 75 years later.
The B-24 Liberator was a four-engine bomber used throughout the European and Pacific theaters of war.
But that wasn’t the only thing about to change for Boody and his squadron.
Battle in the skies
“We were soon ordered to Britain,” Boody said, and their initial duty was to patrol for submarines there in the waters between Great Britain and France. It was a bloody war zone.
There was one particular close encounter that Boody remembered in vivid detail.
Flying alone, “we suddenly were encountered by 13 German J-88s, the best twin-engine bomber-fighter the Germans had,” Boody said.
The enemy fighters may have noticed that this newer model of the American B-24 bomber had front-mounted guns, and not particularly spoiling for a fight, the planes closed in and the first 12 moved away.
But not enemy plane No. 13.
“He came in and made an attack,” Boody said.
But the pilot approached from the rear and continued his flight forward of the B-24 after making his attack run. That proved to be a mistake.
The gunners on Boody’s plane opened fire, including from the forward mount as the German aircraft passed them and flew in front.
The sky was filled with bullets racing through the air, with gunners in each plane trying their best to kill and destroy the other.
Both planes were hit. But the German fighter suffered the most, or so it seemed at first.
“The last we saw of it, he left a plume of smoke and went into a dive, and that was the last we saw,” Boody recalled, still unsure of why the other 12 didn’t re-engage and take down the outnumbered bomber.
Perhaps they were out of fuel and ammunition from previous action. Perhaps they were student aviators and their instructor was just shot down. Perhaps it was the surprise of the forward gun mounts or a more important mission, Boody tried to reason.
Whatever it was, he briefly felt fortunate to have survived the encounter.
During the attack, however, the B-24 was hit hard and lost its No. 4 engine. “It was just windmilling,” Brown remembered. “The pilots shut it down, and we made an emergency landing in England,” near the famous white cliffs of Dover.
They survived.
But the war was far from finished for Boody Brown.
A different type of mission soon awaited the veteran and battle-ready crew, and it would present additional dangers beyond deadly air-to-air combat.
A new mission
“In early fall 1943, a Navy crew relieved us, and we were sitting there, with no duty,” Boody recalled.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had earlier in the war charged his own secret agency, the Special Operations Executive known as SOE, to “raise hell with Hitler,” so that the Germans would be distracted, especially leading up to D-Day and the planned Allied invasion to retake continental Europe.
Britain’s Royal Air Force, already famous for its defense of the island nation in the Battle of Britain fought in the skies including over London, had two squadrons assigned to secret missions with the SOE.
“They needed help. It wasn’t enough,” Boody said.
His squadron would be the one to answer the call, and orders came to train with the RAF.
Along with the new assignment came a new nickname: Carpetbaggers.
“Carpetbagger was just a code word for these type missions,” he said.
It didn’t take long for the Carpetbaggers to leave their calling card on the Germans.
Behind enemy lines
It wasn’t just the flight crews that made adjustments. Their airships got a makeover, too.
“We were going to be doing night flying, on clandestine missions,” Boody said. “Our aircraft were modified, painted a solid black with no markings on them.”
The front gun was removed, as well as the bottom gun turret, as the B-24 was engineered to make low-level drops of material and personnel, something different from its previous high-altitude bombing design or submarine hunting over the sea in daylight.
(Photo/Air Force Special Operations Command)
“We were trying to avoid fights,” he said. “Of course, the Germans did send up night fighters looking for us.”
One of the most important cargo loads often carried was secret agents, “mostly French resistance,” Boody said.
There were code names for the spies and resistance fighters dropped, including males and females, all at low altitude in efforts to avoid detection and ground fire.
Containers, which the air crews seldom knew what was inside, were dropped from only about 400 feet in altitude. Secret agents and fighters were dropped from only 600 feet, Boody said.
“We wanted to get them on the ground as quickly as possible. We also wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible,” he said, given that every flight was made far behind front lines and deep into enemy-controlled territory.
Flashlight codes were used on the ground by the resistance groups that had been alerted and expecting the incoming airdrops.
Boody, however, also remembered when the flashing signals didn’t match the code.
“It was the Germans on the ground and they had taken the site,” he said. “They were trying to trick us into making our drop. The pilot would pull out and we’d go away.”
That would result in gunfire from the Germans below, trying to shoot down the B-24 and its Carpetbaggers inside.
Boody all of his life kept a sense of deep respect for those on the ground in the resistance movement whose lifeline depended on his aircrew and others like it making successful drops, and the secrecy that was required to protect them.
Many years later, a 3 a.m. phone call proved the feeling was mutual.
Nations give thanks
Most of the missions Boody flew took him on dangerous low-level night flights over the small nation of Belgium.
A few years before our conversation in 2018 — long after the war and what Boody felt was distant history — he was awakened in his Opelika home from a predawn call.
It was someone in Belgium inviting him to a ceremony. Boody didn’t fully understand the conversation nor the ceremony, but he nonetheless agreed to attend and felt honored.
He was more honored when the Belgium government presented him with a medal representing one of that nation’s highest honors.
Further, and perhaps even more meaningful to Boody, the family of one of the resistance fighters he had helped on the ground participated in the ceremony.
Soon after the war, the French government also had presented Boody and his squadron with medals and citations. But regrettably, the U.S. government had made no such recognition of them, of the Carpetbaggers, or even of the OSS itself.
Much like it had done in keeping other Top Secret programs off record for half a century, such as the Navajo Code Talkers and their role with the war’s only never-broken secret code, the U.S. was slow to shed light on these OSS heroes and their brave efforts.
The Carpetbaggers finally got their day decades later.
Act of Congress
Congress on Dec. 14, 2016, approved an Act that called for a gold medal to be created honoring those who served in the OSS, an agency long gone but not before spawning various contemporary agencies, from the CIA to special-op military units, all crucial to America’s defense today.
Inside the Capitol in Washington, D.C., Boody, said to be the only surviving member of the original Carpetbagger squadron, was among the few War World II veterans on hand to accept the honor in a Congressional ceremony.
Then-House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) took part in the bipartisan ceremony.
“The Congressional Gold Medal is the highest civilian honor the United States can bestow,” a statement on Ryan’s website said.
Boody and his three daughters, all scattered from Opelika to Alaska, gathered and attended the ceremony together.
“I’m pleased that people are going to finally know what we did,” Boody said during our long, peaceful, sit-down interview in his quiet Opelika home.
Boody left active duty at the end of the war, but he remained in the Reserves and committed to service for 20 more years. He retired a lieutenant colonel.
When we met, Boody still had — and looked fit enough to wear — his old uniform.
And Boody had just gotten a shiny new medal to go with it.
A thank-you salute to Boody
Orrin “Boody” Brown would have turned 106 on April 4.
His celebration-of-life service is set for 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026, at First Methodist Church in Opelika.
Somehow or another, I finally was able to talk Boody into sharing with me his secret for such a long, healthy life, but I can’t share it with you because, well, I promised not to put it in the story.
Why not, though, I asked him?
He gave me that century-old boyish grin of his and said, “because I don’t want the church ladies to know.”
Boody Brown was a hoot.
And a hero.
Thank you, Boody.
*****
Troy Turner is the editor and senior consultant for AlaDefense.com. He has a deep background as a military-history writer, including as author of the book “Colorado’s Lost Squadron,” and his current book project, “War Damn Heroes.” He can be contacted at [email protected].
The obituary for Orrin “Boody” Brown Jr. can be found here.
