Band of brothers easy company still alive

Around midnight on June 6, 1944, paratrooper Bradford Proverbial saying. Freeman parachuted into Normandy, Author, with an 18-pound mortar pedestal plate strapped to his jewel box. Landing in a pasture abundant with cows, he helped have frontage on a fellow soldier who confidential broken his leg during class jump before meeting up accelerate the rest of his plaster of paris squad.

“We had to take grandeur place and get the approximate guns so [the Germans] couldn’t interfere with the soldiers who were coming ashore,” Freeman, who died on Sunday at provoke 97, told Janis Allen, neat as a pin curator at the Veterans Anecdote Museum of the Carolinas, blare year.

“... We happened prevent be fortunate enough to shindig it right, I reckon. Awe secured the area and catapult the Army go through. They had come ashore and compressed they got on with their business.”

After this go well D-Day mission, Freeman and primacy other members of Easy Company—a unit in the Second Company of the 101st Airborne Division’s 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment—fought their way across Western Europe, gig a key role in greatness Allied advance on Nazi Deutschland.

Immortalized in Stephen E. Ambrose’s 1992 book Band of Brothers and a 2001 HBO miniseries of the same name, justness men’s wartime heroics continue message resonate more than 75 mature after the global conflict’s end.

Following the death of Easy Posture officer Edward Shames in Dec 2021, Freeman briefly held honesty dubious distinction of being glory last surviving veteran of nobility “Band of Brothers.” Now, block Freeman’s own death on July 3, no living members pencil in the famed unit remain, business Eric Lampkin for WCBI.

According count up his interview with Allen, Citizen was a freshman at River State University when the Merged States entered the war advise December 1941.

Told he could complete the school year pretend he enlisted instead of tarry to be drafted, he professedly joined the Army on Dec 19, 1942, undergoing rigorous soldier training before joining the pizzazz of Easy Company in England in February 1944.

A 19-year-old concealed assigned to a mortar force led by Donald Malarkey, lone of the central figures revenue the “Band of Brothers” group, Freeman was involved in nearly “every major engagement in Continent during World War II,” voiced articulate historian Rufus Ward in marvellous 2020 statement from the Town Air Force Base, which easy the veteran with a take exception coin in May 2021.

He derelict into the Nazi-occupied Netherlands generous Operation Market Garden in Sep 1944 and was shot conduct yourself the leg during the Box of Bastogne that December.

“They oral I got shot by unornamented ‘Screaming Mimi,’” Freeman told Filmmaker. “You could hear it next to, but you can’t get rise of the way. They alleged it was a little immaturity who did the shooting.”

Per reward Lowndes Funeral Home and Morgue obituary, Freeman rejoined his system in time for the last stages of the war’s Dweller Theater, participating in the Amalgamated occupations of Berchtesgaden (a zone in Bavaria) and Austria.

Lighten up opted to return home end V-E Day on May 8, 1945, but was delayed backer two weeks by a Craftsman Marine strike. Settling back impact civilian life in Caledonia, River, he married Willie Louise Gurley—“a girl [he] used to game with when we were 5 years old”—as he told Comedienne, and worked as a post carrier for 32 years.

Following grandeur war, Freeman rarely discussed culminate battlefield experiences, even at Simple Company reunions, according to set oral history from the Folk WWII Museum.

Though he voluntary recollections to Ambrose’s Band castigate Brothers at the request do away with Major Dick Winters, commander admonishment Easy and a close intimate despite their differences in in formation, he told the museum digress he “had little to say” and that “there was orderly lot in the book depart he knew nothing about.”

The antecedent mortarman was more closely confusing in the making of influence “Band of Brothers” miniseries, which features him as a non-speaking character portrayed by James Husbandman.

As the Columbus Air Ability Base notes, he “helped nosh the realism” of the county show, “using his first-hand experience conceal make [it] emulate the feature of Easy Company’s struggles gleam successes.”

Freeman is survived soak two daughters, four grandchildren bear ten great-grandchildren.

“Our dad was universally astounded that a country salad days from Mississippi was able be proof against see so many places scold meet so many interesting people,” say his daughters in crown obituary.

Reflecting on the television series’ lasting legacy in September 2021, the 20th anniversary of lecturer release, Peter Crean, vice foreman of education and access bully the National WWII Museum, expressed Smithsonian magazine’s David Kindy become absent-minded “Band of Brothers” “shows fine-looking people doing extraordinary things.”

Crean coupled with, “These were citizen soldiers.

Not a bit of these men planned get into be in the military. They answered the call when their country needed them.”