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History See other History Articles Title: UNIQUE WAR EXPERIENCES RECALLED Carl Ziegler says one of his assignments near the end of World War II in Europe was to steal Lipizzan horses. And it was famed Army General George S. Patton who put him up to it. Ziegler, now 81, residing in Salmon, went overseas as a recruit and served two years as an Army seargeant with the Third Army Infantry. "Patton was fond of horses and knew the Lipizzan breed pretty well," Ziegler recalled. "Somehow he found out I had put down somewhere that I rode horses." "Three of us were assigned to go into Yugoslavia when Tito and the Russians were running the country. I jumped out of a Piper Cub flying about eight feet off the ground. Those kind of planes were used during the war for communications. I jumped out in Czechoslovakia about 50 miles from the frontier." "I don't know where the other two went until I saw them when I got back to my base in Germany. In Yugoslavia I found 11 mares of which four were later certified. The trip out was through mountainous country. I rode an old mare that was not broke to ride. I traveled the 50 miles in 5 days." "The pilot who flew me in came back and circled to indicate the direction I was to take. I stayed at night in brush draws and would sneak in at night to water at farm troughs. I never saw anyone but I think the people were sympathetic to the Americans." Ziegler said Patton had seen the Lipizzan horse perform which created his interest in the animals. "Those horses were sacred as far as Patton was concerned. The Americans had gotten the stud horses out early so we were sent in to get the mares for breeding. The Germans had used the horses to pull their guns when their vehicles broke down. The Germans had turned to stealing horses and then it was my turn." "I'm just a stupid old kid. When I entered the service they identified me of being of Indian descent and had a record of having experience with horses. My father had 300 brood mares with a thousand head of horses in all when he ranched in the Pahsimeroi Valley." Ziegler spent nearly two years in the Army, getting out in December of 1945. In January, 1946, he went to the White House to receive a decoration at Patton's direction. He had turned it down in Germany and turned it down again. But he got to talk to President Harry S. Truman. "I had been written up in 'Stars and Stripes' reporting I had killed 363 Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. It may have had some truth to it but I didn't think it was very nice; it was too gruesome." Ziegler also recalls the time when his unit was in Austria and took control of 13 German youths who had turned themselves in. They appeared not to have any families. Ziegler said that when the present Catholic Pope Benedict was interviewed recently he told of a group of German youths he was with who had given up. "He told the interviewer they had turned themselves into the American soldiers below Innsbruck in Austria. He was then 17. I'm trying to check to see if he was one of the German youths who came in to us during the war. I was just 20." Ziegler was wounded twice during the war when he was shot through the arm and was hospitalized in Paris. The second time he was shot in the shoulder and spent five days getting to an American hospital. "They were initiating an experimental drug called penicillin at a hospital which had been converted from Napoleon's horse barns,"Ziegler said. "That was on November ll, 1944. The Army had one medic and 150 patients. They gave me the penicillin in water every two hours. It must have worked since I'm still kicking." Ziegler served during part of the Korean War as an instructor of weapons in 1950 at Camp Roberts, California. "They then sent me to Monterey, California, for an eye test which I failed, ending my military service," he said. As an instructor he taught a class of 72 in the operations of the Browning automatic rifle. Ziegler lived as a youth in the Pahsimeroi Valley and today has an acreage out River Street where he rides a horse, cuts hay, and uses the rest for pasture. I've had the prvilege to meet Mr. Ziegler, along with another grand older gentleman here. I've actually seen him riding his horse. There were three (3) pictures included with this story. One was at a showing in Vienna's famed Spanish Riding School of a performance by the studs. He was at the show when the picture was taken. Only the stud horses are used in these phenomenal athletic performances by these special all-white/near pure white horses. Another shows him just after the war ended, in his uniform, with his sargeants stripes or badges or whatever they're called And the last is a drawing of him by a fellow soldier in his unit. That fellow is now a professional artist in New York. It's a side view with his helmet on. And this Pahsimeroi Valley, is a rugged beautiful area south of here a ways that is full of ranches, and now as the old generations die off, more and more some special homes are being built there. I believe my brother would cut off his arm if he could retire to the Pahsimeroi Valley---the landscape and the few people there are fantastic.
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#2. To: rowdee (#0)
Too bad the story wasn't online to see the photos.. interesting story.
#3. To: Zipporah (#2)
Our local little weekly newspaper will be lucky to go online just after the Coming of Christ. I try to type these exactly as the paper has them. Sure makes for some odd sounding things to me.......as well as punctuation, and capitalization! That probably gets me more than anything else. :)
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