A Lipizzaner and rider in a modern horse show
April 28, 1945: Just before V-E Day, American soldiers save an entire breed of horses -- with help from some of the enemy.
As historian/humorist James Fell, author of On This Day In History, Shit Went Down, wrote:
In the small town of Hostau in West Czechoslovakia, there were hundreds of prize horses held by German forces. The Americans learned that Soviets were closing in, and feared they'd be all, "Oh, horse meat! Yum!" and launched a quadruped rescue raid.
It didn't hurt that there were also a few hundred Allied prisoners held there in need of rescue. But among the horses were 400 Lipizzans, representing the entire breeding stock of a famous equine of the Habsburg Empire. If they got turned into kolbasa, that would be it for the breed.
The Lipizzan is prized for being both powerful and agile, with history as a war horse. Born dark colored, their coats turn grey and later white as they age. According to the Disney version, General George S. Patton, commander of the U.S. Third Army and an avid horseman, ordered the raid to rescue the horses. But that's not true. He didn't know shit about it. A Third Army tank unit commanded by Colonel Charles Reed took the initiative to fight its way through enemy lines to effect the rescue. Patton didn't get involved until later, providing support to help with the escape.
How did the Americans learn of the endangered equines? The German officer in charge of the horses sent a message saying he and all his men would surrender if the Americans promised to save the horses. The mission was called Operation Cowboy. The Americans entered Hostau on April 28, 1945, rescued the Allied soldiers, took the Germans prisoner, and got the horses. Not just Lipizzan, but several hundred others, over a thousand in all.
Now they needed to escape, and the fucking Nazis weren’t having it. See, the Germans who surrendered were regular armed forces, called the Wehrmacht. Definitely on the same side as Nazis, but not actual Nazis. Nazi soldiers were called Waffen-SS, and they were made of douche. And, being douches, they wanted to wipe out the Americans and the horses too. So some of the Wehrmacht soldiers who had just surrendered to Americans turned coats and joined forces with their American vanquishers to fight alongside them against Nazi attacks.
There were two battles during the escape, leading to a number of American deaths, but they killed a lot of Nazi assrags in the engagements. It wasn't just Nazis they had to protect the horses from. Despite the Soviets being American allies, they wouldn't take kindly to seeing the ass end of all that "food" riding out of Hostau. The herd rode west out of town just as the first Soviet tanks rolled into the east end of Hostau.
The Lipizzans were returned to the riding school in Austria, where their descendants perform to this day.
End of Fell's narrative. After the war, the town's German name of Hostau was dropped, and it was given a Czech name, Hostouň -- not to be confused with the American city of Houston.
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April 28, 1945 was a Saturday. This was also the day that Benito Mussolini was executed. I have a separate entry for that event.
The National Football League was in its off-season. The National Hockey League had already completed its season, with the Toronto Maple Leafs having won the Stanley Cup. And the National Basketball Association wouldn't begin play for another year and a half. But there were baseball games played that day:
* The New York Yankees beat the Washington Senators, 2-1 at Yankee Stadium. Nick Etten singled home the winning run in the bottom of the 13th inning.
* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat their arch-rivals, the New York Giants, 4-3 at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. The Giants led 3-1 going into the bottom of the 9th, but the Dodgers scored 3 runs, with the winning run driven in on a single by center fielder Goodwin "Goody" Rosen.
* The Boston Braves beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 8-7 at Braves Field in Boston.
* The Boston Red Sox beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 8-4 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia.
* The Detroit Tigers beat the Cleveland Indians, 5-1 at League Park in Cleveland.
* The Cincinnati Reds beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 1-0 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Arnold Carter pitched a 6-hit shutout.
* The Chicago Cubs beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 6-0 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Hank Wyse lost a no-hitter in the 8th inning, on a single by Bill Salkeld.
* And the Chicago White Sox and the St. Louis Browns were rained out at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. The game was made up as part of a doubleheader the next day. The ChiSox started the season 5-0, but the Browns swept the doubleheader, 3-2 and 10-4.
And while England's Football Association had shut Football League and FA Cup competition down for the duration of the war, there was Football League South play. Arsenal beat Chelsea, 3-0 at White Hart Lane in Middlesex.
Yes, The Arsenal used the ground of their arch-rivals, Tottenham Hotspur, because their home, Arsenal Stadium, a.k.a. Highbury, in North London was appropriated by the government for defense purposes. The London Government Act 1963 redrew the boundaries of the city of London (not to be confused with "The City of London") so that White Hart Lane was inside the city for the first time.
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