Video: Local Veteran Reflects on D-Day

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CALEDONIA, Miss. (WCBI) — It’s been 70 years since Bradford Freeman, and the rest of the Band of Brothers, parachuted behind enemy lines into Normandy, France.

“It’s just like it was yesterday, I mean, the whole thing. You don’t lose it,” Freeman said. “We were supposed to jump on the fifth, but they put it off. We really didn’t know if we were going to go on the sixth or not at that time. Then, of course, General Eisenhower came to the base that night and said we were going.”

Freeman says they knew it would be a dangerous mission.

Thousands of allied troops died that day.

“You weren’t going for fun,” Freeman said. “You know that. So they told you that you were going where you could get killed.”

Many of those who survived are living up to their name as brothers.

Freeman says they’ve kept in touch all these years, and they’re still very close.

“Whenever you train with them, and I don’t know, it’s just something we, we kept in contact with one another the whole time. We had 67 reunions,” he said.

Steve Wallace got to see their camaraderie first hand, joining Freeman on several of the reunions, like no time had passed.

“When they get together, they’re 18 years old again, and like most veterans, they rarely talk about the horrors of the war, but the fun times in the Army,” Wallace said.

And like these veterans, Wallace says it’s important for Americans to never forget D-Day.

“Had it not been for them, who knows what would’ve happened?” Wallace said. “I think that D-Day is by far in a way the most important day in U.S. history, most important day.”

Categories: Local News

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