{"id":90881,"date":"2019-09-19T12:15:36","date_gmt":"2019-09-19T16:15:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=90881"},"modified":"2019-09-19T11:56:48","modified_gmt":"2019-09-19T15:56:48","slug":"better-late-than-never-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=90881","title":{"rendered":"Better Late Than Never"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-70095\" src=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/D-day-stuff-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/D-day-stuff-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/D-day-stuff-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/D-day-stuff-444x333.jpg 444w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/D-day-stuff-400x300.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A World Warr II tanker crewman was recently awarded the Bronze Star.<\/p>\n<p>From the article: Smoyer, of Allentown, Pennsylvania, was part of a famous March 6, 1945, duel in Cologne, Germany, where his Pershing tank destroyed a German Panther tank about three weeks after D-Day. The battle was captured on film and Smoyer became known as the \u201cHero of Cologne.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Smoyer was told he would receive the Bronze Star, but a few days later he ran afoul of a minor disciplinary issue that cost him his medal. A military police officer saw him searching his pockets for bubble gum to give to a crowd of German children and charged him with fraternization with the enemy. Meanwhile, Smoyer\u2019s tank commander and the military cameraman who filmed the battle received Bronze Stars of their own.<\/p>\n<p>Smoyer\u2019s story was detailed in \u201cSpearhead\u201d by author Adam Makos , and it was Makos who helped engineer Wednesday\u2019s events. He helped convince the Army to reverse what he saw as an injustice. And he brought Smoyer to Washington on the pretense of a book-signing at the Pentagon. &#8211; article<\/p>\n<p>The full article is here:\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.armytimes.com\/news\/your-army\/2019\/09\/19\/the-hero-of-cologne-receives-his-bronze-star-75-years-late\/\">https:\/\/www.armytimes.com\/news\/your-army\/2019\/09\/19\/the-hero-of-cologne-receives-his-bronze-star-75-years-late\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A World Warr II tanker crewman was recently awarded the Bronze Star. From the article: Smoyer, &hellip; <a title=\"Better Late Than Never\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=90881\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Better Late Than Never<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":653,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[359,226,121],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-army","category-veterans-in-the-news","category-war-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/653"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=90881"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90885,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90881\/revisions\/90885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=90881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=90881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=90881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}