This Memorial weekend I would like to also honor my father (P. Frank Freeman, (1921–2002) a WWII Draftee.


 His story of being mistaken for CID in France during the war is a hoot. Being an African-American and a mistaken CID, no one wanted to be on his “bad side.”


Anyway here is one of his stories:


“To this day, during December 1944, P. Frank “…did not understand why [his] unit commanded [him] to take an armored car to a depot in Liege, Belgium. [He] was the only one, and Liege [was] 210 miles from Paris. It was cold, and that armored car looked like a medium tank but with wheels rather than tracks. It rode like a Cadillac but had no heater and no headlights. When it got dark, [he] had to pull off the road and into the woods for cover. The next morning [he] was on his way to Liege again, but soon noticed there were a lot of troops coming back for some relief.”


Continuing his journey to Liege, he soon came upon a roadblock “…and was stopped by some military police. One of them yelled at [him] ‘Where in the hell do you think you’re going?’ ‘To Liege’ was P. Frank Jr.’s reply. ‘Like hell you are, the Germans are in Liege.’ Leaving the armored car off the road, P. Frank Jr. was placed into a truck, and back to Paris he went, making his way back to his unit’s command in Chateau de Vincennes. Later he learned “… that was the Battle of the Bulge, and like a fool, [he] was the only one going forward while everybody else was coming back.”

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