CURRAHEE

The Last Survivor of the ‘Band of Brothers’ Army Unit Has Died

Easy Company’s Bradford Freeman passed away Sunday at age 97.

Bradford Freeman, the last survivor of the D-Day Army unit at the heart of the Band of Brothers book and TV show, died in Mississippi on Sunday. He was 97. Freeman was just 18 years old when he was enlisted to fight in World War II, volunteering to become a paratrooper. He became a mortarman in Company E, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. On D-Day, Freeman parachuted into Normandy before being wounded at the Battle of the Bulge. “After the war, he returned to Caledonia and married Willie Louise Gurley on June 29, 1947, and worked as a mail carrier for 32 years,” an obituary by Lowndes Funeral Home in Columbus said. The exploits of Freeman’s unit, Easy Company, were the basis of Stephen E. Ambrose’s book Band of Brothers, which inspired the 2001 HBO miniseries of the same name.