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Henry B. Prenger |
| My Dad was in Company G and was a witness to Captain Bunch’s
death and his account was different than that from Bob Robinson. I
was wondering if you had an e-mail for Bob as I would like to get
with him about this. It sounds like he knew some of these people
before they shipped out and it would be good to hear his side of
things. My Dad said that Bunch was a fiery man who had both the fear and the admiration of the men he commanded. The action that day was one of the first heavy actions that the company had experienced. Bunch was at the head of the company in the hedgerows when the panzers broke through. My Dad said it was one of the most terrifying moments of his life. Bunch walked up and down in front of the wavering men with his .45 drawn yelling out that if anyone ran he would shoot them (and my Dad said he was tough enough that he would have). “Besides,” Bunch told them, “we have our own tank right here!” The tank he referred to was a “bastard” tank (a lot of companies
had tanks attached to them early in the war and they were largely
the misfits from armored divisions and very unreliable). As soon as
artillery started to fall and the panzers showed up, the tankers had
jumped out of their tank and ran for the rear. A private told
Bunch, “Captain, those tankers done up and run,” which made Bunch
furious and he climbed up on the back of the tank, looked down the
hatch, stood up and said, “Damned if they didn’t!” at which point,
standing on the back of the tank with his pistol still in his hand,
he was hit and fell down off the tank. |
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