In order to retell this story, I relied on first-person accounts, published books and monographs, and archival material in both English and German. Many of the participants wrote their own unpublished first-person accounts of what transpired during the mission. The broad outline of each account is the same, but in some particulars the accounts differed. Where there are discrepancies, I’ve tried to acknowledge them in the endnotes. All material within quotation marks is either a direct quotation or derived from a conversation that was reported later by one of the participants. In cases where the dialogue is a paraphrase, I’ve tried to include the exact words in the notes.
A few books that gave me a deeper understanding of the time and place include The End by Ian Kershaw, which helped me understand the conditions in Germany as the war was ending; Orderly and Humane by R. M. Douglas, for background on the German Bohemians; and Two Lives in Uncertain Times by Wilma and Georg Iggers, for prewar life in Bohemia. For life in the twentieth-century cavalry and the army’s move from mounted to mechanized warfare, I relied upon The Twilight of the U.S. Cavalry by Lucian K. Truscott Jr., and Through Mobility We Conquer by George Hofmann. For background on Witez’s life, I drew upon The Romance of the Kellogg Ranch by Mary Jane Parkinson, and And Miles to Go by Linell Smith, as well as the film Path to Glory from Horsefly Films. For detailed information about the Spanish Riding School and the Lipizzaner horses, I drew upon The Lipizzan Horse by Georg Kugler and Paula Boomsliter. And for the life of Alois Podhajsky, I drew upon his own writings, in particular, his memoir My Dancing White Horses. For further reading on the interplay between beliefs about genetic inheritance and Lipizzaner horses, I would recommend Brother Mendel’s Perfect Horse by Frank Westerman, and for a full picture of the relationship between horse sports and National Socialism in Germany, “…Reitet für Deutschland”: Pferdesport und Politik im Nationalsozialismus by Nele Maya Fahnenbruck.
For place-names, I’ve chosen to use the German names used during the time that the story takes place. Many of these have changed, as these towns are now located in the Czech Republic and have Czech names.
In the course of writing this book, I had many touching conversations with the descendants of these World War II soldiers, but the words that I believe marked me the most were those of the son of James Harold Pitman, who was only a baby when his father was killed in the war. He said, “I hope you can bring him alive again.” I have tried.