Bradford Freeman, the last survivor of the World War II paratroup company, whose combat abuse was featured in a best-selling book and the subsequent miniseries Band of Brothers, was on Sunday in Miss Columbus. died. He was 97 years old.
His death at the hospital was announced by his family through the Loans Funeral Home in Columbus.
Mr. Freeman was a senior soldier assigned to the mortar unit of the 101st Airborne Division, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 2nd Battalion, Easy Company. He participated in a troop jump behind Utah Beach during the Normandy Landings on June 6, 1944, tying an 18-pound mortar to his chest. Landing on a pasture full of cows, he helped his fellow soldiers with a broken leg to hide before joining his rest of the troops.
He fought the Easy Company in a battle with the Germans in France, the parachute fell into the German-occupied Netherlands, and the Battle of the Bulge took place in the harsh cold and snow.
He was unharmed in a battle in the strategic town of Barge in Bastogne, Belgium, but was injured in nearby Novil in mid-January 1945. In an April 2018 interview, GI mentions the nicknames given to German catastrophic rocket launchers. He returned to the Easy Company in April 1945 and participated in the occupation of Hitler’s abandoned mountainous region of Berchtesgaden near the Austrian border, and then in Austria.
He was fired in November 1945 with the rest of the Easy Company.
Bradford Clark Freeman was born on September 4, 1924 in Artesia, Mississippi, as one of eight children of Irwin and Olly Freeman. He was a student at Mississippi State University when the United States entered World War II. He joined the Army in December 1942 and went abroad with the 101st Airborne Division in early 1944.
Historian Stephen E. Ambrose interviewed a veteran of the Easy Company about his book “Band of Brothers” (1992), a title taken from Shakespeare’s “Henry V”. Army to defeat the French in the Battle of Agincourt:
“We are a minority, a happy minority, a group of brothers. / For him who is bleeding with me today / Let’s be my brother.”
Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg created the Emmy Award-winning 10-part miniseries “Band of Brothers,” based on Ambrose’s book on HBO in the fall of 2001. Freeman was portrayed by actor James Farmer. In a role that doesn’t speak.
After the war, Freeman graduated from Mississippi and worked as a mail carrier for 32 years. He married Willy Ease Girly in 1947. She died in 2008.
Freeman, who lived in Caledonia, Mississippi, is survived by his daughters Beverly Bowles and Becky Claddy. His sister, Clay Dean Allen. 4 grandchildren. And 10 great-grandchildren.
Edward D. Shames, the last surviving officer of the Band of Brothers, died in December 2021 at the age of 99.
“My people didn’t seem to be very interested in what we did in the war,” Freeman told a commercial dispatch in Columbus, Mississippi in 2016.
He continued until 2008, when Valor magazine arranged a trip to England for Mr. Freeman and other members of the Easy Company, even after the book “Band of Brothers” was published and the miniseries aired. Inquiries about his service were sporadic, he said. For a ceremony at Buckingham Palace.
Freeman returns to Normandy as an honorary guest in 2019 75th anniversary of D-DayAnd in May 2021, at his lawn ceremony, he received a framed autographed photo and coins in honor of his service from General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“This is a surprise to me,” he told the rally. “I don’t know how to express my gratitude, but I didn’t do anything I didn’t expect. I just listened to my officer and did what he said.”
