Post by connie on Apr 23, 2022 10:37:10 GMT -5
Bugner, Thomas F, S.Sgt 590 B., POW IVBVeterans History Project Interview. 106thdivision.proboards.com/post/4827/thread
Screen Shot of Bunger from that interview:
590th Field Artillery Battalion POW Manifest compiled by Carl Wouters: www.indianamilitary.org/106ID/Rosters/REFERENCES/57%20-%20590thFA%20POWs/57.htm
As you roll through the alphabet numerous times in this list, Bugner's name is in the second repeat of the alphabet.
click to enlarge screen shot:
Cub Magazine April - June 2008- 4 page account of the war written by Bugner and Chuck Conley found on pages 8-12
www.indianamilitary.org/106ID/2008-04%2605%2606/2008-4-5-6.pdf
A portion of that article beginning on p. 11:
The 590th was eventually overrun by the Germans on the morning of December 19th while supporting an abortive attack by the 422d and 423rd. The 590th had moved across Skyline Drive to support the attack. The Germans came up from Blealf (Bleialf), to the south. Tom Bugner said, “we ran out of shells for the howitzers. Another fellow and I dropped grenades into the muzzles of the howitzers to blow out the breeches so they could not be used again.
The Germans had all the men they had captured on the ridge around us. Then the order came to surrender and then not to surrender, that we were to fight on. The battery commander asked me what I had left to fight with? I told him I had one grenade and a clip of ammo. He had one clip also. “The Germans who had the captured men said they would kill them all. They sent an officer with a white flag and told us to give up or else.
It is a feeling you cannot describe. I took my carbine and wrapped it around a tree. I was holding it by the muzzle, and there was a cartridge in the chamber. I could have killed myself, but I was so angry that I did not think about it at the time.” The losses to the 422nd and 423rd regiments, along with the 589th, 590th and 592nd artillery battalions, and supporting engineers, anti-aircraft, Medics and armored cavalry — came to more than 8,000 men. No one will ever know exactly how many surrendered on December 19th. Over 6,800 were from the 106th, including Tom Bugner from the 590th. “They marched us to the back of their lines,” Tom said. “They killed the ones who could not make it. Then they marched us about 40 miles in about 12 to 14 hours. We did not have anything to eat or drink except the snow on the ground. We were then put on a train. We stopped in Limburg, Germany, where we were caught in an air-raid bombing, and we lost a lot of men there. My friend and I got away, but the Germans caught us again and put us back in the boxcars, and they nailed the doors shut so we could not get out again.” It was not a Merry Christmas for Tom. He was in captivity for nearly five months. He stated, “when I walked out of the prison camp in 1945, a free man once more, my weight had dropped from 175 pounds to 96 pounds.”
POW IV-B 106thdivision.proboards.com/post/4946/thread