Dashing across Austria with his tanks in the spring of 1945, ex-Cavalryman George S. Patton paused long enough to watch a prancing white stallion being put through some remarkable parade-ground paces. General Patton had heard the story of Vienna's famed Spanish Riding School and its Lipizzan* horses. Their classical routines went back to the 16th Century, their bloodlines to Spain and Arabia. When Patton learned that the Nazis had appropriated the Lipizzans and sent 200 mares and foals to a town in Czechoslovakia, he acted with characteristic dash. He sent a tank column to bring them back to Austria. "America," said...
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