FILE - Bradford Freeman, assigned to ‘Easy’ Company, 2nd Battalion of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, prepares to meet friends on his porch on Sept.
3, 2020, in Mississippi. (Senior Airman Keith Holcomb via Columbus Air Force Base)The last surviving member of the 101st Airborne Division’s Easy Company, which was made famous by the HBO miniseries "Band of Brothers," has died.
Bradford C. Freeman, who was known to his friends as Mr. B, passed away on July 3, 2022, according to his obituary. He was 97 years old.
Freeman was assigned to the U.S. Army’s Easy Company, 2nd Battalion of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division in 1944 and was a mortarman. "He (Freeman) was in every major engagement in Europe during World War II," Rufus Ward, a historian and 43rd FTS honorary commander, told Columbus Air Force Base during a 2020 interview. "He’s a true American hero and we need to honor those people … we owe them more than we could ever repay them." Freeman stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, battled in Operation Market-Garden and was part of the defense of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge.