Last surviving ‘Gang of Brothers’ dies: ‘Always amazed that a Mississippi farm boy has seen so many parts of the world’

Freeman was part of the Easy Company, the US Army’s paratrooper unit that was shot down over France during World War II. He participated in the invasion of France on D-Day, in Operation Market Garden – a failed attack in the Netherlands – and in the Battle of the Bulge. He was wounded during those last battles. Then he participated in the occupation of Berchtesgaden – where easy company I got to Adolf Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest first – and Austria.

After the war, he worked for the United States Postal Service for 32 years. He died at the age of 97 in a hospital near his hometown of Caledonia, Mississippi. “Our father was always amazed that a Mississippi farm boy like him had seen so much of the world and met so many interesting people,” he reads his obituary. Freeman left behind two daughters, four grandchildren, and ten great-grandchildren.

Stephen Ambrose told the story of The Easy Company in his book ‘a band of brotherswhich formed the basis of the award-winning television series of the same name.