From Amazon:
"When Clarence Smoyer is assigned to the gunner’s seat of his Sherman tank, his crewmates discover that the gentle giant from Pennsylvania has a hidden talent: He’s a natural-born shooter. At first, Clarence and his fellow crews in the legendary 3rd Armored Division—“Spearhead”—thought their tanks were invincible. Then they met the German Panther, with a gun so murderous it could shoot through one Sherman and into the next. Soon a pattern emerged: The lead tank always gets hit.
After Clarence sees his friends cut down breaching the West Wall and holding the line in the Battle of the Bulge, he and his crew are given a weapon with the power to avenge their fallen brothers: the Pershing, a state-of-the-art “super tank,” one of twenty in the European theater. But with it comes a harrowing new responsibility: Now they will spearhead every attack. That’s how Clarence, the corporal from coal country, finds himself leading the U.S. Army into its largest urban battle of the European war, the fight for Cologne, the “Fortress City” of Germany.
Battling through the ruins, Clarence will engage the fearsome Panther in a duel immortalized by an army cameraman. And he will square off with Gustav Schaefer, a teenager behind the trigger in a Panzer IV tank, whose crew has been sent on a suicide mission to stop the Americans. As Clarence and Gustav trade fire down a long boulevard, they are taken by surprise by a tragic mistake of war. What happens next will haunt Clarence to the modern day, drawing him back to Cologne to do the unthinkable: to face his enemy, one last time."
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I also read, enjoyed and reviewed Spearhead.
“Spearhead” is what I call small history. It is the history of the tank crews, both American and their German adversaries. The author follows the crews through a series of episodes from Belgium on September 2, 1944 to Paderborn in April 1945. The breakthroughs and the pushbacks, the friends and enemies who were killed and the families shattered by speeding bullets pull the reader through a roller coaster of emotions. The Americans’ encounters with young German women leaves one wondering, will they get back, or did really read of their final goodbyes? Then there are the flashbacks to be dealt with and the reunions in advanced age.
My appreciation for this book ebbed and surged as I read. I generally prefer big history, the outlines of movements, leaders, victory and defeat rather than the tales of the soldiers and civilians who lived through great events. The deaths of characters to whom we had been introduced shined spotlights on the unpleasantness of war that we know occurred but prefer to conceive of as aggregate statistics rather than personal tragedies. The parts I liked most were those that echoed what I had heard from veterans, eating Hershey bars on the troop transport, the German phases used and a German veteran’s observation that “This was about staying alive, not about winning.” I learned a lot about the Sherman and Pershing tanks. The image of soldiers opening up on a heard of deer with rifles and machine guns for fresh meat inserts levity into an otherwise dreary saga.
The end is surprising so I will not spoil it. I think this is very much a 21st Century World War II book that would not have been written when the memories were fresher. When you start, stay the course, ride the ups and downs and reserve your opinions until the last pages.
Great insight Jim!