Troops with anti-tank guns lying in ambush. Learned that the lead tank was usually the one to get hit by German That became increasingly difficult when his tank became the Spearhead, the lead tank going into battle. Far from developing any kind of bloodlust, Clarence’s motivation was simply that he wanted to keep every member of his crew alive. He was the one who now had to pull the trigger in order to kill another human being. Army’s Third Armored Division on a job that ran counter to his natural, peaceful personality: tank gunner. In 1944, at age 21, Clarence found himself in Nazi-occupied Belgium, serving with the U.S. “He was this quintessential Greatest Generation guy who grew up in tough circumstances, and it made him a strong person with a deep moral fiber,” explained Makos. Early on, he developed a sense of responsibility that led him to work odd jobs to help support his family. That mystery would lead Makos, Clarence, and two of his Army comrades back to Germany to figure out the whole story – and ultimately befriend a former enemy.ĭuring a “Christopher Closeup” interview about his latest best-seller “ Spearhead: An American Tank Gunner, His Enemy, and a Collision of Lives in World War II,” Makos said he learned that Clarence grew up poor during the Great Depression in coal country outside of Philadelphia. Clarence was also a man plagued by the mystery of a fatal encounter in the city’s streets that involved a German tank gunner and an innocent civilian. Makos soon discovered that Clarence served as the lead tank gunner who helped liberate Cologne, Germany, from the Nazis in 1945. Though he had been a hero of World War II, Clarence Smoyer was living in relative obscurity in Allentown, Pennsylvania, until best-selling author and military historian Adam Makos visited him in 2012 on the advice of a college friend.
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