With an ear-splitting bang, the shell demolished the chimney, while an unexpected sideways blast of gasses from a newly configured firing system sent the assembled officers, including Rose, tumbling to the muddy ground. He heard his sergeant call the range and specify a target - "The chimney!" - that seemed hopelessly precise for his first live fire in a just-off-the-assembly-line tank.īut his uncanny eye, honed as a kid during nighttime escapades hunting for frogs with his BB gun, didn't fail him now. Smoyer used the tank's sighting mechanism to draw a bead on an abandoned farmhouse in a village more than a half-mile away. Smoyer felt lucky to serve under such a fearless and beloved commander in the outfit Rose had dubbed "Spearhead" - so named for its habit of leading the American assault. Barely more than a kid from a Pennsylvania steel town, he had never fired the new tank's cannon, and here he was about to perform before a general whose legend grew by the day. The young gunner, 21-year-old Clarence Smoyer, fidgeted.
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