When a car raced into the intersection, Smoyer blasted it with machine-gun fire. In the rubble-strewn inner city March 6, Smoyer saw a German tank creep out from a street corner and pull back quickly. The metropolis was in ruins from Allied airstrikes. He recalled his lieutenant saying over the radio: “Gentlemen, I give you Cologne. Smoyer was now the gunner on a new Pershing “super tank,” one of only 20 operating in Europe. In February 1945, the division crossed into Germany and pushed toward the Rhine River at Cologne. Smoyer remembered cold nights in the Ardennes and weeks of confusion about exactly where he and his crew were, and whether friend or foe was in the next field. The 3rd Armored, called the “Spearhead” division, reached Germany by mid-September and redeployed to Belgium to help beat back the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge.
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