Adam Makos

""Do you really want the whole story about what happened to me and my crew?" Charlie asked… I was about to make excuses and tell Charlie I had little interest in a German fighter pilot's perspective, when he said something that shut me up. "In this story," Charlie said, "I'm just a character – Franz Stigler is the real hero."" (pg. 5)

A Higher Call is one of the most remarkable true stories from World War Two I've heard (and that's a very competitive field). I don't want to retell it here show more myself, because it really deserves the attention author Adam Makos has given it in this book, but essentially it revolves around an incident in the skies over Germany in late 1943. A crippled American B-17 bomber is spared (and saved) by the German ace fighter pilot who intercepts it. There is more to it than that, and the blow-by-blow account Makos gives us only makes us realize how astounding the encounter really was, but – like I said – it deserves Makos' careful unfolding of the story rather than any brief summary I could give.

Even a great story needs to be told right if it is to be effective and it is to Makos' great credit that he has done so. Before reading it, I had wondered how a single short wartime encounter could be spun into a 400-page book, and if it were not for all the glowing reviews I would have suspected a good deal of padding. But there is none, and though the actual aerial encounter takes place over only a few chapters in the middle of the book, all the prior information is essential in understanding the German pilot's motivations on that day, and all the stuff that follows it is a sweet payoff, particularly the reunion in 1990 of the German fighter pilot and the American bomber pilot he saved.

Makos, a first-time published author (though he is the editor of a respected military magazine), handles the story deftly. Alongside dedicated research, he neatly mixes the story with facts on the larger air war to provide context: exactly how popular history should be written. It never once flags and is a joy to read, hitting the perfect tone throughout. A Higher Call doesn't play up any religious angle – despite the title – and doesn't make a mountain out of the German pilot's Catholicism. Similarly, the de-Nazification of the Germans is done tastefully, by letting small, quiet moments of humanity and moral principle shine through, rather than any tone-deaf "We were victims of Hitler, too" approach. There is much to admire here in Makos' writing, which does all this without distorting or interfering at all with the story it is telling.

It is just a beautiful story, done justice by its author, with a very human theme that allows a German to be the hero of a World War Two story, and rightfully so, because the book compels you to view the people involved as individuals rather than uniforms. There is a profound sense of quiet nobility and selfless co-operation that emerges, and of simple humanity; a message the book brings home in its perfect final line, which really capstones the story. A Higher Call stands out in a crowded field, and it is a book it is impossible to be cynical about. show less

I didn’t plan it this way, but I find it highly appropriate that I finished Spearhead: An American Tank Gunner, His Enemy, and a Collision of Lives by Adam Makos during Memorial Day weekend. Spearhead is perfect for this particular holiday because it is one of those rare World War II histories in which the reader learns as much about the individual soldiers doing battle as about the battles they waged.

The 3rdArmored Division, “Spearhead,” is legendary for being at the forefront of the show more final push into Germany that ended the war in Europe – and the tank crew that Makos focuses on was one of the very best in the division. That is largely because the crew was blessed to have Clarence Smoyer as its gunner. Clarence may have missed out on the formal training given to tank gunners, but it turned out that he was a natural shooter who never missed. More importantly, some of his shots were so unorthodox in nature that his crew came to feel that Clarence was sometimes the only thing between them and death on the battlefield.

Even Clarence, though, would probably not have been able to save them forever from the German Panthers that so clearly outgunned the American Sherman tanks. It is said that a Panther could take out two side-by-side Shermans with one shot, so Clarence and his crew felt that it was only a matter of time before they would fall prey to a Panther. But that changed one day when Clarence’s crew was given one of the twenty brand new “super tanks” that America rushed into Europe to help offset the superiority of the Panther. That’s the good news; the bad news is that now Clarence and the boys in their new Pershing would be the lead tank in every offensive that the division was a part of.

The climax of Spearhead is a personal one involving a duel between Clarence’s Pershing and a Panther whose gunner is teenager Gustav Schaefer. It is a battle in which only one of the tanks can survive and the victor will help decide in whose hands the city of Cologne is in at the end of the day’s fighting. But something happens in the middle of their fight that neither gunner expected – something that Clarence will see in his nightmares for decades to come. In March 2003, Clarence and Gustav got the chance to meet face-to-face again in Cologne to figure out exactly what happened all those years earlier.

Adam Makos found so much material available to him and his researchers that reading Spearheadis almost like riding along with Clarence and the rest of the tank crew. Researchers used archive materials from the U.S. and England, period interviews between the crew and war reporters, detailed weather reports, battle orders, and even the transcribed radio logs of tank commanders talking to each other and their crews during the battles. But perhaps best of all, Makos was able to study the footage shot by Jim Bates in Cologne that day – film footage that even includes Clarence’s one-on-one duel with Gustav when they crossed paths at a Cologne intersection.

Bottom Line: Spearhead is a remarkable reminder that World War II is not so long ago that we do not still have veterans on both sides suffering from the memories of what they experienced in battle. (My own father who just turned 97 was member of an artillery battery involved in several of the battles described in Spearhead from Clarence’s point of view.) Even if military history does not normally appeal to you, don’t miss this one. It is that good. show less

As someone who lost family in the Holocaust, I have alwYs viewed German World War II military personnel with a very jaundiced eye. It is refreshing to know that there were many anti-Nazis who did their job because they were defending their homeland, not because of political ideology. This book is a moving and refreshing view of an honorable man who committed an honorable act.

It is almost impossible to describe the range of emotional responses reading this story invoked within me. As a patriotic American and the great-grandson of German immigrants to America, this story touched me on many levels.

This is the story of two men, pilots in their respective country’s air forces, meeting in a chance encounter in the skies over Germany. This meeting would eventually go down in history as one of the most amazing tales of World War II.

I stayed on the edge of my seat show more reading this story. It was very hard to put down even when I needed to. It was like I became Lieutenant Charlie Brown and the fate of ‘Ye Olde Pub” and the B-17’s crew was in my hands. I also became the pilot of the ME-109, torn between my humanity and the orders of the Nazis government that I secretly despised. We do not hear the words combat and chivalry used in the same sentence these days.

I became totally engrossed in the characters on both sides! This book made me wince. At times it made me chuckle. In addition, this story tugged at my heart and there were several times it even brought a tear to my eye. show less