CONVERSATION WITH CLARENCE SMOYER
A DEADLY DUEL
BY DAVID KINDY
CLARENCE 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. During the Battle of Cologne in
March 1945, a combat photographer caught a duel between his Per-
shing tank and a German Panther on film; it played in newsreels
around the country. 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.
How did you end up in the tank corps?
After the draft, I was called up in 1943 to basic training at Fort Knox.
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. Instead of giving me wings, they assigned me to the tank corps.
I was bummed, of course. Turns out they had dug into my record and
found I had completed a course in engine maintenance. So I was sent
to join the 3rd Armored Division. 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?
I was 19 when I was called up, so leaving home for the first time was
all part of a grand adventure. I knew what I was getting into and
wanted to serve my country. As we moved through training and
learned more about the horrors of war, any feelings of adventure
18 WORLD WAR II
In film shot by a U.S. Army cameraman, a
German tank burns in the shadow of Germany’s
Cologne Cathedral after gunner Clarence
Smoyer (last fall, opposite) fired on it.
wore off. It became serious and scary—yet
still exciting in many ways. We were a family
in that tank. That’s how we survived those
early days in combat. Everyone did their job
well; we were a smooth-running family.
How did you become an expert
gunner?
When we trained in England, I shared a pup
tent with our gunner, “Big Mal”—Corporal
James Mallet. 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.
He taught me the basics, but the rest I learned
by watching him closely from across the
breech. 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. The targets were
table-sized, set way up on the dunes, about
1,000 yards away. To everyone’s surprise—
including my own—I hit the target all eight
times and had the highest score. They said I
had some natural skill as a gunner but I was
content to be a loader. I was from a German
family and killing Germans did not appeal to
me at the time. I knew it was war and I would
have to deal with that, but it was better to put
off that hard reality.
What was your most frightening
moment?
It was scary all the time but the worst was in
the city of Cologne the afternoon of March 6,
1945, when we decided to take on a Panther
tank that was waiting for us at the cathedral.
It had just knocked out two of our Shermans,
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so we knew its crew was good. Our tank com-
mander, Sergeant Bob Earley, went on foot to
reconnoiter—a really gutsy move—and sure
enough he spotted the tank and we had a good
 chance to hit it broadside. But in the time between when he saw it and
when he got back to us, that Panther turned its gun and was ready for us.
When we roared into the intersection to shoot, instead of seeing the
flank of the Panther in my periscope sight, I could see the muzzle of
that big gun looking right at me. I snapped off a quick shot and hit him
first. I kept yelling for AP [armor-piercing] rounds and hit him again
and again ’til he caught fire. I could hardly breathe as we backed out of
there. People always ask why I fired three times, not giving the German
crew a chance to flee. Well, that was the rule. Any crewman still alive
in that Panther could have pulled the trigger and with that powerful
gun pointing at us, we would all be dead and not here to tell the tale.
You were in a new Pershing heavy tank then, but you
started in a Sherman. How did the Pershing’s 90mm
gun compare to the Sherman’s 75mm weapon?
Well, the 90mm had far more firepower than the 75mm gun, so it’s
really no comparison at all. The 90mm shell was about twice the size
of a 75mm shell and weighed twice as much—40 pounds, in fact. The
big deal, though, was the velocity, which gave the 90 its striking
power: some 2,800 feet per second with our AP round. With that gun
we had something that could penetrate the thick frontal armor of the
JAMES KEGLEY PHOTOGRAPHY
“I kept yelling for armor-
piercing rounds and hit
him again and again.”
What did firing those big guns
feel like?
It shakes you up, inside and out. The recoil of
the gun rattles you to your bones. You’re vibrat-
ing from it. Fumes from the fired shells build
up and sting the eyes. Dust and debris flies
everywhere from the ferocious muzzle blast
and it takes forever to settle, which makes you
even more stressed. Everyone is just a bundle
of nerves. It was a shoot-first-ask-questions-
later situation. Survival is all it was.
Your division helped stop the
German breakthrough at Bastogne

German tanks. Before that, our best hope was for a side or rear shot. during the Battle of the Bulge, where
The 75mm shell would bounce off the front armor of the heavy Ger- temperatures were well below
man tanks, especially the Panther. The big 90mm gave us a fighting freezing. How did you stay warm?
chance even though our armor in the Pershing wasn’t much better I was in a Sherman then, which had no heater
than that in the Sherman. and—worse—any engine heat was drawn out of

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19

the tank by a fan unit on the engine. We often
sat in the tank for hours in roadblock positions
ready to ambush passing German vehicles—
freezing our butts off the whole time. Our
tank had one small Coleman stove to heat a
cup of water or a can of food. It was of no use to
keep warm. So you would put on all the clothes
you had and wrap a blanket around you.
On most nights I would climb into my
sleeping bag inside the tank, shoes and all, to
escape the cold, even if that meant I wouldn’t
be getting out if we got hit. The bags we had
were a canvas outer with a blanket interior.
Frost would form inside the tank from our
breathing. It was like living in a steel ice box.
Frostbite was common as a result because for
the most part you were stationary. The cold
was as much an enemy as the Germans.
How did combat in Cologne
compare?
This fight was different. Taking a large city
gave the enemy plenty of places to hide.
Cologne put us all to the test. Our Pershing
was chosen as the first tank into the city;
everyone else followed us in. So for us it was
constant firing. You fired at anything that
moved. That’s when a gunner’s instinct
kicked in, guessing from where that Panzer-
faust [anti-tank warhead] might come at you.
I was scared and always scanning for targets.
I remember looking at this nice clock
tower, somehow still standing after that city
had taken 262 airstrikes by the time we got
there. Then it clicked in me: “Forget it! A
German observer could be up there!” So I
20 WORLD WAR II
Smoyer (center, helmetless) appears with
the crew of the T26E3 Pershing, “Eagle 7,”
shortly after the March 6, 1945, tank duel.
blasted that clock face and the tower
came down with it. It was our job to
rain destruction.
More than 50 years after the
Battle of Cologne you got to
watch the full newsreel film
of your duel with the German
tank. What was that like?
When I first saw the film, in 1996, it
brought chills to my body. It took me
right back to the awful feelings, all the
bad stuff at once. It took my breath away.
I saw details—the big picture—in a dif-
ferent way, since the first time was only
through my sights. It was a real challenge to watch it, but I did. Those
combat photographers took great risks. They were brave men.
Watching that film made it even more clear to me.
The film revealed painful details about a civilian
woman killed in crossfire with the Germans, most
of which you’d been previously unaware.
The thought of that young woman, Katharina Esser, dying on that
street still bothers me. Who wouldn’t be bothered? After I saw the
film of her driving through the crossfire of our Pershing and another
German tank, I couldn’t shake it. What helped was going back to
Cologne. It was in 2013 when I went back and met Gustav Schaefer.
He had been in that German tank. He first saw the film 10 years ear-
lier and told me he believed he had shot the young woman’s car. He
was firing at me. I was firing at him. She drove through that. We still
don’t know which of our bullets hit her.
Hearing Gustav say that lightened my guilt. It was good to have
someone to share that burden with. We discussed it together. We
visited the site where she drove through our crossfire. There it hit
us—it was the war that put us in that situation. It was war.
How did it feel to meet a former enemy tanker,
face to face?
At first I was a bit nervous. I wondered if he would accept me. It was
a big gamble traveling to Cologne just to shake someone’s hand. I met
him at Cologne Cathedral. I told him, “The war is over, now we can be
friends.” He said, “Ja. Ja. Gute.” It was wonderful. I could see he was
as nervous as I was.
When we sat down and drank beer, I learned about the hard fight-
ing he had seen, defending the West Wall down in Luxembourg
against our army. It was really something to get chills, picturing
myself in a German tank! He told me he had nightmares about Kath-
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arina, too. We became like comrades in our three days together, even
though we fought on different sides. I never thought this sort of thing
could happen but it did and I’m grateful. When he and I were ready
to leave Cologne, he told me: “I’ll see you again, in heaven!” +