The year was 1945. The end of the war in Europe had been declared with an Allied victory.

In March of that year, American tanks rolled into Cologne, Germany, the heart of the Third Reich, to liberate the city from further Nazi occupation.

A 21-year-old gunner from Lehighton, Pennsylvania named Clarence Smoyer and his four-man crew rumbled down the streets of the Cologne in their Pershing Eagle 7 super tank, spearheading a mission to eliminate remaining German soldiers who had been ordered by the Nazi regime to fight to the last cartridge.

One afternoon, in an armored showdown between Smoyer’s Pershing and a German Panther IV tank, a collision of lives would forever change the course of personal histories for this young man from Lehighton, for the German tank gunner and for an innocent young woman who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

‘The gentle giant from Pennsylvania’

In his book, “Spearhead,” a biographical account of Smoyer’s life, author Adam Makos coined this phrase about the former Carbon County native.

One might think that a tank gunner should be a George Patton or a John Wayne type, but that’s not what you’ll find in this tall, soft-spoken “gentle giant.”

“I’ve shrunk a bit since then,” said Smoyer with a chuckle.

Now, his 95 years of life have slowed him down a bit in his walk, but his mind is remarkably spot on in remembering vivid details from more than 75 years ago.

Born in Parryville, he lived on Bankway Street in Lehighton before his family moved to First Avenue. His father worked at a local print making blast furnace plant while his mother was raising two boys and a girl.

“I remember we had a swing on the porch of our house on Bankway,” he said. “I would swing back and forth and look across the street at a pretty young girl who was swinging on her porch at the same time.”

Their eyes had met, but not their hearts.

Smoyer would go on to marry an 18-year-old girl from the town named Melba.

He spoke of his favorite place in old Lehighton, Graver’s Roller Rink that stood adjacent to the largest concrete pool in Pennsylvania.

“When we were on mission in Belgium and Germany, I always said to my guys in the tank, ‘I can’t wait to go home and roller skate at Graver’s again.’ ”

After quarterbacking his sixth-grade team, he played football at Lehighton High School as a third-string running back and he thought back at a time when he was handed the ball in practice. “I was gang tackled so hard I got up with a bloody nose,” he said with a laugh.

Then came his 18th birthday, and Clarence Smoyer would have to leave his family and his home after receiving his draft notice to the United States Army.

Time to roll out

“I made a good friend in basic training and we decided we wanted to be paratroopers, but I changed my mind after I looked up and saw them falling from the sky.”

So Smoyer took a class that certified him in tankard mechanics, and this led him to become a shell loader inside U.S. Sherman tanks. Then one day, with the prize of a bottle of scotch to the winner, a contest was held for his company’s loaders to take turns as gunners and see how many targets they could hit.

“Clarence hit seven of seven from 1,000 yards away,” said Makos. “He won the bottle of scotch and became a sharp-shooting gunner.”

Meanwhile the German tanks had been more accurate and powerful than the American Shermans, that was until the U.S. Pershing Eagle 7 was introduced late in the war. The Pershing possessed more striking power than the Nazi Panther Mark IV.

In 1944, this gentle giant who was never in a fistfight, and according to Makos, had hunted for rabbit just once back home in Pennsylvania “and even that he did halfheartedly,” was positioned as the gunner with a crew of four other men that spearheaded the liberation of Belgium and Germany. The Americans knew they would face Nazi resistance, those remaining soldiers who had been ordered to fight to the death.

In armored warfare, the first direct hit usually wins the battle. Smoyer had to be sure to shoot before the German Panther could fire and make certain his first shell was the kill shot.

It was in Belgium, September 1944, with a river of panic swimming through his veins, that Smoyer destroyed his first of five Panther tanks with a direct hit.

“He considered his tank crew to be his family away from his family at home, and he had to take care of them,” said Makos. “As a boy in Lehighton, while his friends were playing ball, Clarence was selling candy door to door because he had vowed, ‘I’ve got to take care of my family, because no one else is going to take care of us.’ ”

Makos added, “His crew was Clarence’s family in the war, but this one was stuck inside a sardine can.”

A collision of lives, a tragic mistake

After knocking out four German tanks in Belgium and in parts of Germany, Smoyer and his ‘family’ rumbled their tank into Cologne, the heart of the Third Reich in early March 1945. Little did Smoyer know that during one horrific late afternoon moment on March 7, a mistaken identity would haunt him for the next 68 years of his life.

Passing the city cathedral in his Pershing tank, Smoyer recalled the orders he had to follow.

“We were told to shoot to kill.”

Suddenly, through the small window in his tank, he saw a German Panther IV roll out from behind a large brick building and then immediately back up behind it. After convincing his crew he would shoot to flush out the Panther, Smoyer heard the sound of a vehicle coming toward the intersection ahead.

Warned by one of his crew that it was a German staff car, he opened machine gunfire, and the barrage of bullet tracers struck the side and back of the vehicle, bringing it to an abrupt stop.

The driver of the car was dead from a head shot. American medics opened the passenger door and laid the body of a young woman onto the side of the street. Smoyer wondered if he had killed the woman, and if so he tried to ease his conscience, thinking she was probably a Nazi officer’s mistress. Why would someone be driving through the streets in a war zone? Then his heart stopped a beat with a thought that she might be a civilian who was trying to escape the city.

He saw one blink of her eyes before her body lay dead on the street.

When reminded of the incident, Smoyer lowered his head. His mouth opened, but no words came out. His silence said enough about what he was feeling.

When the crew’s attention turned back to the concealed German tank, he fired three consecutive shells at the wall. Bricks fell onto the tank and disabled the tank’s big turret gun from rotation mobility.

“We saw men from inside the tank jump out and run away,” Smoyer said.

Sixty-eight years later, he would meet one of the escaping Germans face to face.

The nature of war

In November 1996, Smoyer received a VHS tape in the mail of a photographer’s film of the events of that afternoon in Cologne. He watched the video and relived every minute of that day and once again he saw the dead young woman on the street.

After years of chronic nightmares from which he had awakened with swinging fists in front of his wife, Melba, Smoyer made a decision at age 89 to go back to Cologne to find the young woman’s grave and ask her for forgiveness.

What happened at the unmarked grave site was extraordinary.

A German journalist had arranged for Gustav Schaefer, who was the Panther tank gunner on that fateful afternoon, to meet Smoyer at the site.

Following a tearful greeting and a long embrace, Smoyer told Schaefer that he believed he shot and killed the young woman in the car.

Schaefer looked him straight in the eye and said words through an interpreter that brought more tears and a shocking revelation to whom would soon become his American friend.

“I shot too and hit the car,” said Schaefer. “I thought it was another American tank coming from a side street.”

He paused and then said to Smoyer, “It’s the nature of war. It can’t be undone.”

These two enemies of war embraced once more while standing at Kathi Esser’s grave site.

“We became friends right away and spent a week together in Cologne,” Smoyer said with a smile.

“It wasn’t their fault or hers,” wrote Makos in his book, “Spearhead.”

The American and German gunners were invited to Kathi Esser’s great-grandson’s home and learned that she was 26 years old when she died, she had a degree in economics and wanted to raise her own family someday.

Her family held no animosity toward Smoyer or Schaefer, prompting Makos to write, ”War touches everyone.”

In the next life

“Whatever guilt remained from the war — they would share it. Whatever nightmares surfaced — they would face them together,” wrote Makos near the end of his book.

Smoyer lifted his eyes, and with a firm voice spoke about a message he had been given from Schaefer’s interpreter just before he departed Cologne to go back home.

“The message, ‘In the next life, we will be comrades instead of enemies.’ ”

‘The last battle’

Gustav Schaefer died in 2017. Smoyer sent flowers to the funeral with a note attached: “I will never forget you! Your brother in arms, Clarence.”

Melba, Smoyer’s wife of 71 years, succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease and died not remembering his name.

He had come home one day from his supervisor’s job at an industrial cement plant to find his only son lying on a bed dead from an overdose of heroin with the needle still stuck in his arm.

To help cope with his incredible suffering, he has gone to soldiers’ reunions, but never did he again see the four men in his crew before each had passed away.

He lives a quiet life now with his daughter in Allentown. He still thinks of Kathi Esser, but his nightmares have been relieved.

When asked what he was most proud of about his experience in the war, Smoyer answered, “I survived and I’m still alive.”

Makos offered a different answer to the question.

“He promised his crew from the tank that he would protect them,” said Makos. “And all four men came home to their own families.”

The term of Smoyer’s military service was, “Two years, seven months and eight days,” he announced firmly.

When provoked to put war in perspective, this “gentle giant,” this Army soldier who protected the lives of his men, who as a young man of 21, witnessed blood and death far too often, replied with a quivering voice.

“War should be fought by the men in governments who cause it to happen, not by those who are too young to die in it.”

He carries his long life with great humility and boasts of no badge of honor. Perhaps he has been given the gift of 95 years to enlighten the unaware so that they might feel appreciation for the precious moments of every day spent on this earth.

For his debt of service to his country and for his unflappable courage to carry on, Clarence Smoyer is a true American hero.

Smoyer’s story has grabbed national headlines and spots on national television shows.

On Thursday Smoyer was at a book signing at the Moravian Book Shop and on Friday he had a special ride in a Sherman tank to the VFW Post 2124 in Allentown. Smoyer was part of a parade in honor of his 95th birthday.

The Times News would like to thank Adam Makos for arranging the interview with Clarence Smoyer.

Makos would also like to acknowledge Pete Semanoff of Lehighton who found Smoyer while working on an Eagle Scout project about veterans and informed him of the Lehighton native.

“Spearhead” can be purchased at Amazon books or at www.adammakos.com.