Edward Shames, a World War II veteran and the last surviving man who served with Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division–the unit known as “The Band of Brothers” because of the eponymous 2001 HBO mini-series of the same name, passed away Friday at the age of 99, CNN reports.
After enlisting the Army in 1942 at the age of 20, Shames joined Easy Company as a private when the unit was formed at Toccoa, Georgia. He rose to become Operations Sergeant before earning a battlefield commission one week after parachuting into France on D-Day. He fought with Easy through the remainder of the war, including when the unit was cut off from allied troops in the Battle of the Bulge, and he was part of the unit that liberated German concentration camps.
After the war, Shames stayed in the military, rising to the rank of colonel in the Army Reserve. He married Ida Aframe in 1946; his wife of 73 years passed in 2019. He has two children, four grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. In the “Band of Brothers” miniseries, he was portrayed by actor Joseph May in the episode “The Breaking Point,” the seventh episode of the series which depicts the liberation of the French town of Foy.