WWII gunner, now 95, gets tank ride

BOSTON — The inside of a tank was Clarence Smoyer’s home, and the crew was his family.

In that sense, the 95-year-old veteran returned home Wednesday for the first time since World War II. One of the last surviving WWII tank gunners, Smoyer was surprised with a ride through the streets of Boston in a Sherman tank.

Smoyer fought with the U.S. Army’s 3rd Armored Division, nicknamed the Spearhead Division. In 1945, he defeated a German Panther tank near the cathedral in Cologne, Germany — a dramatic duel filmed by an Army cameraman that was seen all over the world.

Author Adam Makos tells Smoyer’s story in the book “Spearhead,” which was released Tuesday. Smoyer would make offhand comments to Makos about how he’d like to get aboard his old Sherman tank one last time. Makos started making calls and Smoyer started doing physical therapy, in case it worked out.

Smoyer, who lives in Allentown, Pennsylvania, had expected a taxi to take him from his hotel to the USS Constitution Museum for a book signing Wednesday. Instead, he found a 32-ton (33 metric ton) Sherman tank from 1944 waiting outside.

A huge smile flashed across Smoyer’s face when he walked outside and saw the tank, saying it was a shock to see it. “That tank saved my life,” he said. The American Heritage Museum in Hudson, Massachusetts, sent the tank and reenactors representing infantrymen to walk alongside for the short trip to the museum. Service members from the USS Constitution and onlookers came outside to salute Smoyer and the tank as it rolled down the street.

After Smoyer was drafted in 1943, he served on a Sherman tank, first as the person responsible for loading ammunition and later as a gunner.

Smoyer was such a crack shot that his crew was given one of the Army’s stateof-the-art Pershing tanks. That meant they would always go first into battle against German tanks that often were better equipped. Pershing tanks were rushed to Europe after the bloody Battle of the Bulge.

“My tank commander, Bob Earley, used to smoke a pipe and when he’d go for a briefing in the morning, he’d come back and the pipe was jumping in his mouth,” Smoyer recalls. “He was nervous because he knew we’d be leading and up in the front again.”