Americans Liberating Lipizzans July 2003 The following is a true story by World War II veteran and Lake Forest resident, Paul F. Kinnucan, who participated in the rescue of valuable Lipizzans in 1945 before they were seized by the Communists, and likely, slaughtered. The tumultuous days of late April and early May 1945, presaged the end of World War II in Europe even as great opposing armies struggled on, locked in desperate throes between victory and defeat. Once rich and vibrant cities lay utterly devastated, their centuries’ old culture buried under heaps of stone and mortar, their homeless survivors joining streams of befuddled refugees plodding from and to all directions. Battered roadways teemed with heavy military traffic, shunting aside all else. Food and fodder were scarce or unattainable everywhere. Numbing, haunting fear and abandoned hope gripped the populace, young and old alike. Placards appeared with bold letters in German reading “Alles kaput!” meaning everything’s done for…Ruined…Dead! The thrust of this doomsday page in history seemed oddly remote in the sylvan vastness of the Bohemian forest. Its stately conifers and mossy floor afforded tranquil respite from sporadic, distant artillery bursts—foot soldiers in the U.S. Third Army, commanded by pine boughs that buckled during the night by a heavy snow squall. With morning, warm spring sun rays loosen the snow burden, sending it cascading down in great globs. One nearly extinguished a blazing fire on pinecones around which some men were huddled roasting chunks of venison. They had shot an elk, now hung suspended from hastily erected crossed staves. The smokeless campfire was promptly rekindled and roasting resumed, while several soggy overalls hooked on the elk’s rack dried. A few days before, our regiment (the 356th Infantry) participated in the surrender of the German 11th Panzer Division near Pilsen, Czechoslovakia. This elite Wehrmacht outfit was a nearly constant adversary, beginning with the bloody hedgerow fighting in Normandy in the Ardennes (Battle of the Bulge) and Rhineland Campaigns, eastward across the Bavarian/Czech border where the Third Army was now poised toward Prague. At one point during their surrender, a Luftwaffe Major handed me his Luger, exclaiming in clipped English, “Herr Oberlieutenant, for us the war is finished.” I asked him why he, an Air Force officer, would be serving in an armored division. The laconic reply: “No airplanes.” Capitulation of the 11th Panzer, yet in fighting trim but short of fuel, was timely in eliminating any serious potential German threat to the successful carrying out of a mission unique in the annals of military history: the recovery of invaluable horses belonging to Austria’s Spanish Riding School. The Lipizzans were then stabled at Hostau, Czechoslovakia, and liable to captivity by the rapidly advancing Soviet Red Army. This operation was unique—if for no reason other than because German officers (who controlled the horses at the time) and American officers cooperated in the rescue of the horses despite being officially at war with each other. General Patton, venerable cavalry officer, Olympic, equestrian, and polo buff, was presumably readily persuaded by German overtures to prevent the nobly spirited animals from promptly falling into the Communist sphere. He forthwith ordered their safe conduct from Hostau to American military occupation zones in Bavaria and ultimately Austria—the true home of the Lipizzans. This of necessity had to be clandestine and esoteric business. For the overriding fact of the matter remained that, under terms of the Yalta Agreement, American troops were not expected to extend their front east of the Bavarian border into Czechoslovakia. But then, General Patton had a distinct penchant for doing the unexpected. Housekeeping chores in our forest bivouac were proceeding apace. Weapons were cleaned and oiled, vehicle maintenance performed, aid station and mess kitchen set up, Lister bags filled with potable water, slit trenches dug for latrines, and so forth. Around noonday, the regimental adjutant raced through our camp perimeter in his jeep, ordered me to his command post at 5 a.m. the next morning, and left without further ado. That evening, I shared a drink of scotch from my liquor ration with a platoon sergeant, and we determined to quarter the elk, cut it into portable pieces, and distribute the meat among the company. (This against a move-up we thought likely due to the adjutant’s order.) I pulled off my boots, covered up in my bedroll and felt the German major’s Luger in a folded blanket under my head. Still wondering what we would be in for the next day, we slept the sleep of the bone-weary, roused once only by a sentry’s sharp challenge. Promptly at 0500 hours there were assembled at regimental headquarters about 15 officers, including field and company grades. We were handed a contour map of the region and told that the briefing about to begin was classified “top secret.” The executive officer then introduced a colonel from the Third Army logistics staff, a thirtysomething West Point career officer. He wasted neither time nor words telling us that on direct orders by “The General” we were forming a task force with the objective of “liberating some show horses.” Every head turned at this strange revelation, so that the colonel was hard pressed to hold a straight face. Without pause, he referred us to our maps, featuring red-penciled road lines and their byway intersections leading from Hostau into Bavaria. He then laid out our mission: to reconnoiter and keep this route free from intrusive traffic and obstructions during a period of 48 hours beginning at 1800 hours, dusk that day. The colonel asked for questions. There were none. The regional sergeant major gave us our individual assignments. I drew mine as aide to the colonel, which in the circumstances euphemistically meant in charge of a detail to serve as his bodyguards. I recruited six enlisted men from a pool of newly arrived replacements, along with a sergeant recovered from wounds and returned to duty. The day was passed organizing and outfitting our contingent. By the looks of them, uninitiated boys in their teens and fresh from basic training in the States, I would not have given much for the colonel’s skin if it came to a showdown. By then he had already twice condescendingly addressed me as “son,” although I’d passed my 21st birthday the month before. Smarting a bit, I fretted not too much about what might be. We set out at the appointed time: the colonel, a driver, and I in a jeep; the others in a weapon carrier armed with three Browning automatic rifles and a light machine gun. We scouted a pre-designated section of the road, while the colonel communicated by walkie-talkie with units involved at other locations. Somewhere between five and twenty kilometers west of Hostau, we encountered trees fallen across the road, their shattered stumps evidence of linked explosives set off by retreating Germans. Summoned combat engineers used a tank destroyer mounting a dozer blade to clear this impediment and scanned for land mines. The rest of the night and following day passed without incident, except for a band of gypsies taking to the road from a patch of woods. The gypsies were told to go back where they came from. Their nondescript, horse-drawn covered carts did an about face while several of their women attempted to lure our men into fortune telling, etc., in exchange for chocolate and cigarettes, universally known to be part of American army field rations. Before light the next morning, the colonel’s orders were to secure and patrol our stretch of road while he, his driver, and a captain assigned to the mission’s cadre left in the jeep heading east. Toward nightfall they returned, along with a German in rumpled civilian dress, scarcely masking his bearing as a Wehrmacht officer of senior rank. The unaffected rapport between him and the West Point-er signaled as nothing else could that the “show horses” had been liberated without a hitch in close, if unacknowledged, cooperation with their German custodians. Now I learned that on the trek from Hostau the liberated Lipizzan rescue caravan took a shortcut, skirting part of the road assigned to my detail. Because of this detour, I lost the privilege of seeing a single one of the 200 or so horses saved through the efforts of our American task force. I returned to my forest bivouac disappointed and fatigued, only to discover that the Third Army had been ordered to quit advancing by General Eisenhower. Boots and all, I got into my bedroll and slept, knowing we would be face to face with soldiers of the Red Army presently. Soon after, I visited a peasant village at the edge of the forest where the quartermaster had secured billets, offering the luxury of hot water to clean up with. A Sherman tank was parked in the town square, with ubiquitous geese gawking at its droning engine. Suddenly, the turret hatch flew open and a tanker jumped out, excitedly waving his arms and shouting, “It’s all over—it’s all over!” His radio carried the news of VE Day, May 7, 1945. American “dogfaces” in the Bohemian Forces celebrated with plenty of local beer and some good cognac—loot from 11th Panzer stores. Venison roasts abounded. Pursuant to directives from Supreme Headquarters, Allied Command by General Eisenhower, our 90th Infantry Division with all other elements of the Third Army in Czechoslovakia began withdrawal westward into Bavaria, the American military zone of occupied Germany. The 90th removed to Grafenwohran, erstwhile Wehrmacht barracks near Weiden. We set to garrison routine, welcoming mail from home. Significantly, the mail orderly expressed relief at no longer being obliged to forward or return letters addressed to combat casualties, happily making his duties that much easier. Soon thereafter, a 6 x 6 truck arrived carrying two dark brown fillies, which the corporal in charge described as Lipizzans that somehow strayed from the herd and were now being transported to join them. “Stars and Stripes” published an article about General Patton’s role in the Lipizzan rescue, with a photo showing the General astride a white stallion, reportedly destined as a present to the Emperor of Japan from the Nazi government. These fillies bore slight resemblance to that stallion. While watering his charges, the corporal averred that these horses turn white as they grow older, “just like people.” And so, I was not deprived entirely from seeing the famous Lipizzans after all.