![]() I was from a German family and killing Germans did not appeal to me at the time. They said I had some natural skill as a gunner but I was content to be a loader. To everyone’s surprise-including my own-I hit the target all eight times and had the highest score. The targets were table-sized, set way up on the dunes, about 1,000 yards away. Later, when the entire battalion went to the seacoast for target training, there was a gunnery competition and we loaders also got to shoot against each other. He taught me the basics, but the rest I learned by watching him closely from across the breech. I was the loader-I would not become a gunner until August 1944-and was cross-trained so I could learn how to shoot the 75mm gun and the coaxial machine gun. When we trained in England, I shared a pup tent with our gunner, “Big Mal”-Corporal James Mallet. Everyone did their job well we were a smooth-running family. That’s how we survived those early days in combat. It became serious and scary-yet still exciting in many ways. As we moved through training and learned more about the horrors of war, any feelings of adventure wore off. I knew what I was getting into and wanted to serve my country. I was 19 when I was called up, so leaving home for the first time was all part of a grand adventure. ![]() Later, when I climbed to the top of Cologne Cathedral, I found out that I was terrified of heights, so being in the tank crew worked out just fine! How did it feel to be a young man going off to war? So I was sent to join the 3rd Armored Division. Turns out they had dug into my record and found I had completed a course in engine maintenance. Instead of giving me wings, they assigned me to the tank corps. ![]() First thing I did was to volunteer for the paratroopers fighting with an elite force just seemed like a better way of making it back in one piece. How did you end up in the tank corps?Īfter the draft, I was called up in 1943 to basic training at Fort Knox. Now 95, Smoyer is the subject of a new book by Adam Makos, Spearhead: An American Tank Gunner, His Enemy, and a Collision of Lives in World War II, and still attends reunions of his unit, the 3rd Armored-or “Spearhead”-Division, which saw Cold War duty and fought in the Gulf War before being inactivated in 1992. During the Battle of Cologne in March 1945, a combat photographer caught a duel between his Pershing tank and a German Panther on film it played in newsreels around the country. Conversation: Clarence Smoyer, World War II Tank Gunner CloseĬlarence Smoyer is a soft-spoken veteran who usually downplays his service in World War II, when he was, for a time, America’s most famous tank gunner.
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