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.

Battle of cologne - tank duel