![]() "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. Those bastards are going to pay, he vowed. Before he entered the shattered city, he'd received word that his cousin and his wife's brother had both been killed in the war. "Gentlemen, I give you Cologne," Smoyer's commander announced over the radio. The Germans called it "Endkampf," the final battle for their homeland. The lanky 19-year-old with a mop of curly hair was part of a tank crew that had crawled into the German city of Cologne for what would become the US Army's biggest house-to-house fight in Europe. It was March 6, 1945, and Smoyer was part of the Allies' last push into Nazi Germany. No one in his tank moved or even whispered. Sweat poured down the leather flaps of his helmet. ![]() A World War II hero returns to Germany to solve a mystery and meet an enemyĬlarence Smoyer's index finger caressed the trigger.
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