Bradford Clark Freeman The Last Surviving Member Of Easy Company S Band Of Brothers Has Died Aged 97.

Known to his friends as Mr. B., Freeman was a freshman at Mississippi State when World War II began, according to the obituary. He volunteered for the paratroopers and “on February 5, 1944, went into the Foreign Service with the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division,” the obituary said. As a mortarman for Easy Company, he jumped into the D-Day Normandy invasion, according to the obituary. He also fought in Operation Market-Garden and participated in the defense of Bastogne, Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge, where he was wounded, the obituary said. After rejoining his unit, he participated in the occupations of Berchtesgaden and Austria, according to the obituary. The Easy Company story was depicted in the HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers,” based on the New York Times bestseller by Stephen Ambrose. After the war, Freeman returned to his native Caledonia, Mississippi, where he married Willie Louise Gurley and worked as a mail carrier for 32 years, the obituary said. In May 2021, Columbus Air Force Base presented Freeman with a challenge coin on behalf of Gen. Mark Milley as a “thank you for your service to your country and for being a hero,” the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to a statement from that of the era. Freeman has a sister, two daughters, four grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren, according to the obituary. “Our dad was always amazed that a country boy from Mississippi could see so many places and meet so many interesting people,” the obituary reads. The unit’s last surviving officer, Army Colonel Edward Shames, died last year aged 99.