The son of a Polish rabbi who emigrated to the United States, he was memorialized when Denver’s Jewish community built the hospital that still bears his name. He became the highest-ranking American officer to be killed by enemy fire in the European theater. In a matter of weeks, Smoyer's resourcefulness under fire would help Spearhead take the German stronghold of Cologne and continue the countdown to war's end.Īnd shortly after that, Rose, racing ahead of an American column caught in the crossfire of an enemy ambush, would be shot - murdered, the Denver Post headlines proclaimed - after a German tank cornered his vehicle and he attempted to surrender. That brief experience, eight miles behind enemy lines, marked the closest thing to a personal encounter between the two men. Rose liked what he saw, and felt the new hardware tipped the firepower scales in the Americans' favor. Smoyer picked off a second chimney, then a third - a mile-distant speck in his scope - as the crowd that gathered cheered both his skill and the tank's awesome capabilities. With an ear-splitting bang, the shell demolished the chimney, while an unexpected sideways blast of gasses from a newly configured firing system sent the assembled officers, including Rose, tumbling to the muddy ground.

He heard his sergeant call the range and specify a target - 'The chimney!' - that seemed hopelessly precise for his first live fire in a just-off-the-assembly-line tank.īut his uncanny eye, honed as a kid during nighttime escapades hunting for frogs with his BB gun, didn't fail him now. Smoyer used the tank's sighting mechanism to draw a bead on an abandoned farmhouse in a village more than a half-mile away.

Smoyer felt lucky to serve under such a fearless and beloved commander in the outfit Rose had dubbed 'Spearhead' - so named for its habit of leading the American assault. Barely more than a kid from a Pennsylvania steel town, he had never fired the new tank's cannon, and here he was about to perform before a general whose legend grew by the day. The young gunner, 21-year-old Clarence Smoyer, fidgeted.

Tank battle in cologne