Someone please explain this to me

[GreenHornet]

two things-
one- are those units crawling in front of him from his unit(D company)? If so, I don't know if this works in game terms but, panic spreads. seeing part of his command routed already can effect his ability to remain calm and rally them too.
second- what year is it? if it is pre 43 then your "regular" HQ unit is actually more akin to a conscript HQ unit; and with the routing of afilliated subordinates nearby (and likely from the same machine gun) the panic of the HQ is not a surprise...

Time frame is June '44. The two other units are, in fact, part of the same D company. One of the units is pinned the other is shaken. Never thought of the possibility that low morale from nearby units may be a factor.

So there's quite a possibility that you had a LOT of negative modifiers to your boys' chances of making it across that open ground and they failed the morale checks because of them.
There's a good chance they failed multiple checks, and thus incurred multiple drops in status leaving you at the broken stage

Good points, as well as the sniper theory. I guess it's quite possible this unit is taking more fire than I'm aware of and that there are more negative modifiers affecting things than I realize.

I know I have a tendency to always want the expected result to happen, and to feel cheated if it doesn't (unless it goes in my favor, in which case I'm a brilliant tactician). My Tiger kills a Stuart, all is well. Stuart kills my Tiger, the game is broken. My Stuart kills a Tiger, I'm a great CM player.

Exactly. This is a huge weakness I have when it comes to playing CM. I love the game, and enjoy it's amazing re-playability but I tend to be a "by the numbers" kind of guy and when things go differently than I expect, then I start looking for rational reasons. I need to remember it doesn't always work that way with CM (nor should it).

Thanks for the good discussion guys.