Smoyer is now 95 and long retired from his job as a supervisor at an industrial cement plant. “I often thought, ‘Why the hell would somebody drive into a place like that,’ ” Smoyer says today. Smoyer dreaded the answers because still more questions had lingered at the back of his mind for decades: Was that a woman? If so, why was she there? And perhaps most important: Did she survive? Yet unlike other mysteries, this was one the main character wasn’t sure he really wanted to solve – at least not at first. How Smoyer answered those questions is the subject of an upcoming book, “Spearhead: An American Tank Gunner, His Enemy, and a Collision of Lives in World War II.” Written by Adam Makos, the engrossing book is a war story and a mystery. And it would force him to deal with another question that may not be limited to war veterans: How do you atone for a terrible deed when you’re not sure you’ve committed it? It would force him to reach out to an unlikely ally. Smoyer’s question would force him to return to Cologne 68 years later. Smoyer’s adrenalin turned to horror: Did I just shoot a woman?
The car’s passenger door swung open and a person with a light-colored sweater embroidered with flowers crumpled to the street.
The car crashed into the sidewalk, and then Smoyer saw something that made the pit of his stomach fall out. Bullets and tracers from Smoyer’s gun smashed into the car ordnance from another source also flew through the intersection. With orders to shoot anything that moved, Smoyer pressed the trigger. “Staff car!” someone yelled over the radio.Ī black Opel streaked into the intersection. Smoyer searched for it, scanning a hellish urban landscape of rubble, sagging streetcar cables and collapsed buildings. But then the enemy tank ducked behind a building.
His M26 Pershing tank had just been engaged in a shootout with a German tank at a sprawling intersection in the town’s center. He gained a reputation for deadly accuracy as a tank gunner.
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