At the last 345th BG reunion in St. Louis, I helped with a memorial service at Jefferson Barracks for the five crews interred there. At the cemetery there is one 499th, one 500th and three 501st crews in their final resting place. While preparing for that service, I noticed one of the communal burials contained individuals from other branches of the armed services. The plot containing the remains of
500th BS members Donald Stookey and Herschel Evans also held remains from nineteen other individuals. I had no desire to overlook these men, so I researched each.

One crew piqued my interest because of a name. Being from Kansas I noticed the pilot’s last name was one I’m familiar with-Marion Unruh. I know this is a common name in the southern part of my state and his plane’s name, “Pretty Prairie Special”, was the clincher. There is a town with that same name. Coincidentally the name “Unruh” would be a name from there. I thought to myself that this guy was from Kansas.

I Googled the name and didn’t find what I was looking for. I found that Col. Unruh was shot down in a B-24 near Rabaul and was a transported to Japan as a prisoner of war. His crew was taken to Rabaul and executed in the Tunnel Hill Massacre. They were the ones in Jefferson Barracks. Unruh seemed to have survived the war. I wondered if he was still alive since I couldn’t find anyone listed in the white pages with his name.

Time ran out on this mystery before the reunion. Recently I was filing away papers and ran across the name again. I wanted to find Marion Unruh.

A friend gave me some slides of an air show photographed in 1966. The film was extremely good and liking aircraft, I researched the tail N numbers. There were about 24 photos in the lot and three of the photos were of planes owned by who else than Marion Unruh. I did some more research and discovered that before the war Unruh was working on a biplane based on a Knight Twister. He built three planes and I had photos of two of them. Mr. Unruh was killed in 1968 in the second N1473V “Pretty Prairie Special II”. The third,
N8635E “Pretty Prairie Special III” is housed at the Kansas Air Museum in Wichita, KS. I don’t know what happened to the first plane.

I can’t seem to stop when researching a story so I called a bank in Pretty Prairie, KS and asked if I could find someone who could tell me about Marion Unruh. I was able to find a contact who in turn mentioned a woman in west central Kansas who had the information I wanted. Joanne Pfannenstiel Emerick is the historian of the 5th BG, 31st Bomb Squadron-Unruh’s outfit. Her book Courage before every danger-Honor Before All Men contained the following story which I have permission to share.

The crew of the Pretty Prairie Special and their pilot, Col. Marion Unruh, have always captured a corner of my heart. Their appeal came, in part, because Col. Unruh, like my father was a Kansas farm boy. I have felt such a sense of sadness whenever I thought of the Unruh crew-captured by the Japanese, with death by disease, starvation and execution following. The six murdered by the Japanese in 1944 left behind families, most of whom never knew that their loved ones were repatriated to Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri, in the early 1950s. Through extensive research by Dale and Cliff Anderson, nephews of the deceased bombardier, Anthony “Tony” Kuhn, it was discovered that Kuhn and his five crewmates- Edward Constantin, Fredrick Koebig, Romulus Mull, Lawson Stewart and Vincent Wasilevski were interred at Jefferson Barracks. On June 27, 2009, members of the Kuhn family, including
Tony’s sole surviving sibling, Ray, gathered at the gravesite with a small contingent from the 5th Bomb Group, to give the six heroes the proper committal service they had been waiting 65 years for. As Father Jack Dempsey blessed the gravesite and the last sound of TAPS echoed across the cemetery, those attending blinked in astonishment as a lone B-17 appeared overhead. No one scheduled it, no one knew anything about it. “I have thought about this incident a lot,” said Charlie Russell, the nephew of Charles Konkle, MIA from the 5th Group who was in attendance, “and I feel as though that B-17 flying over when it did was all those brave young men, those who came home and those who didn’t, telling us they were glad we still remember them and what they did.” Much healing took place that day at Jefferson Barracks. Oscar Fitzhenry was one of two pilots who had spotted the downed crew on the beach of New Ireland Island after their plane had crashed. Since that moment six decades ago, Oscar agonized over the crew’s demise. I rested my hands on his shaking shoulders during the gun salute and TAPS as he whispered his own goodbye. By day’s end, his spirit and the twinkling in his eye had reappeared. After 66 years, the Kuhn family had finally found peace, and so had Oscar Fitzhenry. (Courage before every danger-Honor Before All Men pg. 378)

There are others who hold the memory of their lost as close as we in the 500th BS do. Even though these men from Unruh’s crew were from a different Air Force and Bomb Group, they nonetheless gave their lives in service to this country. Together at Jefferson Barracks in a communal grave with our boys, we two groups shall eternally be entwined. I don’t know if the total story of Marion Unruh has been told yet, but part of it is now known. Let us never forget any of them.

Kelly McNichols


Unruh Crew Memorial Service June 27, 2009 at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery, St. Louis, MO

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