Unbreakable Read online
UNBREAKABLE
The Woman Who Defied the Nazis
in the World’s Most Dangerous Horse Race
RICHARD ASKWITH
PEGASUS BOOKS
NEW YORK LONDON
Contents
1. Old Women’s Gorge
2. The little countess
3. Horseplay
4. The dance of death
5. Broken in
6. The winds of change
7. The breaking of nations
8. A fresh start
9. Riding out
10. Allies
11. The great game
12. Stepping up
13. The first hurdle
14. Fight to the finish
15. The outsider
16. Mortality
17. Norma
18. The Germans
19. Taking sides
20. ‘A woman? Bah . . . ’
21. Himmler’s cavalry
22. October 1937
23. The Battle of Pardubice
24. Rejoice!
25. The reckoning
26. Brave new world
27. The fall
28. Enemy of the people
29. In the woods
30. The show goes on
31. Journey’s end
32. The right stuff
33. Epilogue: the good and faithful servant
Sources and notes
Notes
Acknowledgements
List of illustrations
Illustrations Insert
Index
1.
Old Women’s Gorge
The hill falls down so steeply you can almost touch the flaking bark at the tops of the high conifers, slanting up from below. Patches of undergrowth sprout feebly from the balding earth. The dry soil is rough with trampled scraps of tree; the air, sweet with pine, is still.
We are just below the brow. The gusting April wind has vanished. So has the low moan it carried from the next valley, of traffic on its early evening rush south-west from Prague on highway No. 4.
A rusting chain-link fence, barely kept vertical by cracked concrete pillars, separates us from a tiny pebbledash cottage that clings awkwardly to the slope. The walls are blotched with damp. The black roof tiles are newer. ‘This is what it used to be,’ says the man with ash-white hair, kicking at some jagged red fragments among the dusty twigs. ‘Asbestos.’
Jan Pospíšil stamps out his Lucky Strike in the debris. ‘They’ll have electricity now,’ he adds. ‘And running water. They didn’t then.’ His eyes glisten, perhaps from the smoke.
‘She was my favourite aunt,’ he explains. ‘Well, greataunt. There were three of them living here, three sisters. I liked Lata best. I was five or six when I first came here. She must have been about seventy. My mother would leave me here to stay for a few days. There wasn’t much room: just two bedrooms. You could fit two single beds in each, and the sides touched.
‘Lata was strict about table manners. But she was kind. She used to send me out to play in the woods. Sometimes she’d give me her gun and some ammunition, and tell me to play with that . . .’ Later, in his teens, they would sneak away into the woods together and Lata would share secret cigarettes with him.
Behind us, up on the hill, a car can be seen, moving noiselessly on the lane that runs along the ridge. Back then, in the 1970s, it was more likely to be a man on a horse; sometimes more than one. ‘The secret police liked to keep an eye on things round here.’
There is no sign of the cottage’s current occupants, nor of any neighbours. Other dwellings are just visible through the trees, but these are recent additions. You wouldn’t expect their occupants to remember Jan’s greataunts. Yet the elderly sisters must have made an impression on someone. The rocky stream at the bottom of the valley is known as Babí rokle, or ‘Old Women’s Gorge’. Lata would spend much of each day going up and down the hill to fetch water from a well by the stream, even though she could no longer walk without a stick.
‘But she never complained,’ says Jan. ‘None of them did.’
For a small nation, the Czechs have an extraordinary gift for producing sporting champions of luminous greatness. Still more remarkable is their rulers’ gift – especially in the twentieth century – for disowning them. Emil Zátopek, the runner; Věra Čáslavská, the gymnast; Olga Fikotová- Connolly, the discus thrower; Martina Navratilová, the tennis player; the near-invincible national men’s icehockey team of 1947–9 . . . All dazzled and conquered their chosen worlds, only to be denounced as traitors or enemies of the people. Some were punished; all were shunned. But none fell so far or for so long as Lata Brandisová, the steeplechase jockey, who displeased not one totalitarian regime but two – having already struggled through years of prejudice on account of her gender.
In her prime, between the world wars, Jan’s greataunt was fêted by statesmen and socialites, acclaimed by chanting crowds. Her achievements in the saddle made headlines not just in Czechoslovakia (as it then was) but across Europe: they were astonishing in sporting terms but more astonishing still in the courage and resilience that made them possible. In an age of prejudice she refused to be constrained by convention. At a time of despair she embodied hope and patriotism. Her aristocratic glamour added to her celebrity, but she was also a figure of deep and serious significance for her nation, her sport and her gender.
She faced her ultimate challenge in middle age, confronting the warrior-athletes of the Third Reich in a sporting contest so extreme in its dangers that some would question its right to be called sport. That day alone should have been enough to earn her immortality. Instead, she was stuffed into history’s dustbin.
She remained there, in that little cottage in the woods, for thirty years, forgotten and unmentionable. Her sisters would leave at dawn, walking to catch a train, to work all day in a factory on the edge of Prague. Lata, still unsteady on her feet from sporting battles gone by, would stay at home, cleaning, washing, chopping wood, fetching water, with only a dog for company.
Later, as age and hunger gnawed at their bones, the sisters became increasingly reclusive. But once a week they would walk to church, always sitting in the same pews, always returning in single file, always alone with their thoughts – ‘like the three kings,’ says a villager who used to watch. Then, nearly forty years ago, even that procession stopped.
Lata’s death, in 1981, was barely reported. She is buried abroad. As far as most of her compatriots are concerned, her story might as well have been buried there with her. A few pilgrims say a mass for her each year at the family shrine in the woods above her old home – hundreds of miles from her actual resting place. Apart from that, you’ll struggle to find a Czech or Slovak who has heard of her, outside the hardcore racing community. In the West, she is almost entirely forgotten. Yet the life of Lata Brandisová was too remarkable to deserve such oblivion. Her character, courage and achievements made a mark that mattered in European history, and made a permanent difference to the opportunities available to the women who came after her. If ever an athlete deserved to have a permanent record set down of who she was and what she did, she does.
Some would say it is too late. There are too few witnesses, too many missing documents. In a cheerful bar among the bleak high-rises of the Prague suburb of Chodov, the respected journalist and racing historian Martin Cáp spends several hours kindly explaining the difficulties to me. He himself has spent twenty years researching a still-unfinished book about the Czech Derby; his knowledge of his nation’s incomplete racing archives is unrivalled, and he is painfully aware of every gap. ‘It’s a fascinating
story,’ he tells me, ‘but it will be terribly hard. So many records have been lost.’
Martin Šabata, a television pundit famous among Czechs for his encyclopaedic knowledge of the bloodcurdling horse race that made Lata a sporting legend, tells me much the same a few days later, in a café in the eastern Bohemian town of Pardubice. ‘The story of Lata Brandisová is an extremely interesting one. I would love to be able to share all the details with you. But I can’t. They are lost.’
These men know what they are talking about; it would be prudent to listen. But although I have tried many times to talk myself out of writing this book, somehow I haven’t been able to stay talked out of it. Each surviving detail of Lata Brandisová’s lost life throbs with the same message: her story demands to be told. Her very obscurity adds to the urgency
In any case, the trail is not quite cold.
A few miles from Old Women’s Gorge, her old family house still stands, on the edge of a quiet, low-lying village at whose heart is an ancient fish pond. It is a small, low stately home, overlooking a tree-shaded courtyard, where Lata’s privileged parents taught her to ride and raised her (in vain) to be a well-bred bride. Water was pouring through the ceiling when I first visited. The coat of arms above the front door had peeled away long ago, and patches of stucco were missing from the outside walls. On the sagging stables – on one side of the courtyard – ‘Danger: keep out’ signs stated the obvious.
Indoors the house is warm and welcoming, but there are still traces of its clumsy repurposing as an institution in the Communist era. It is hard to imagine that this was once the home of a family of aristocrats – let alone that one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated sportswomen lived here.
Lata and her sisters were driven out in the 1950s, long before Jan was born. The property came back to the family under ‘restitution’ , following Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution of 1989. Jan has lived here (most of the time) since 1993. He shares the old property with his wife, Gabriela Křístková, along with two dogs, three cats and six horses. They support themselves with a portfolio of activities that includes forestry and riding tuition. Time or energy that remains is devoted to undoing the damage of the Communist era. ‘It had been reconstructed in the socialist way,’ explains Jan. ‘There were trees growing from the roof.’
One day they hope their home will feel more like the home that Lata lived in, but the restoration is a thankless task. The passing seasons nibble insatiably at house and garden; it’s battle enough to prevent further degradation. Behind the house, wild boars have made a wasteland of the sloping fields in which Lata learned to ride; the forest on the hill beyond would quickly become an impenetrable wilderness without constant intervention by its owners. Like a profligate ex-spouse, the estate endlessly renews its demands for maintenance.
The couple stick at it, determined to honour the memory of their most remarkable relative. In one small room, they have even assembled a ‘mini museum’ in Lata’s honour. There isn’t much in it yet: a few dozen photographs; a cupboard of clothing and rosettes; a small glass case full of souvenirs. But that may soon change.
In 2006, Jan’s Aunt Eva died. She was eighty-four, unmarried – and the longstanding custodian of family memories. Jan found himself the unexpected owner of ten large boxes stuffed with papers, photographs and newspaper cuttings. It was the kind of legacy that can take years to unjumble – if you ever get round to making a start on it. With Aunt Eva’s boxes, the process is almost complete. The contents have sometimes proved baffling; most concern family members who do not come into this story. Yet every now and then there is a priceless clue to its heroine – because Eva was Lata’s niece.
Much of what follows is based on lines of enquiry that began with these boxes, some of which led in unexpectedly fruitful directions. Other family members, and countless friends, acquaintances and witnesses, have also contributed generously. The resulting picture is not complete: occasionally I have been reduced to joining the dots, speculatively, between known facts. (I have made it clear when I am doing so.) But the picture is drawn from life. There really was a countess whose nation took away her privileges one by one, yet who became its figurehead in its time of need. There was – and still is – a steeplechase so extreme in its demands that some consider merely taking part in it to be a sign of insanity. There was indeed a band of Nazi paramilitaries, seemingly invincible on horseback, who chose that same steeplechase as an arena in which to prove their credentials as a master race. And there really was a woman, shy, modest and awkward in company, who tried to stop them; and who refused – in that as in much else – to take no for an answer.
A photograph from Aunt Eva’s boxes shows Lata in her prime. It is cut from a newspaper, yet her joy fills the faded picture. Head held high, strands of fair hair drifting from her helmet, she is breathless and shining, minutes after her most famous victory. Her eyes seem glazed with thrill and wonder. This is the Lata Brandisová who astounded Europe: bold, defiant, radiant with self-belief.
Beside her stands a pale horse, inches from her head. It, too, appears to be in a kind of trance. The two lean towards one another in unconscious intimacy.
Both seem euphoric. Both seem proud. Both seem to glow, like victorious warriors, with the joy of survival. Much of Lata’s greatness can be sensed from this preserved moment. To win her glory she required fighting spirit and physical and moral courage to a degree more usually associated with warfare than with sport; and she required a loyal comrade – no less indomitable – from another species. Both points are central to her story.
Lata Brandisova came of age as one empire was collapsing and died as another was approaching its overdue end. In between came two world wars, depression, occupation, revolution – and world–changing technological upheaval. She and her sporting contemporaries wrestled with forces – sexism, class hatred, nationalism, fascism – whose shadows darken today’s world too. Her struggles, to which she brought an unbreakable courage beyond most imaginations, were never just about sport.
Nor were they just about her. In her death-or-glory moments, she rode for her nation, and for her gender; perhaps even for freedom. And she did so – as she never forgot – as one of a partnership, between rider and ridden, in which she was the weaker link. That is perhaps the strangest thing about this strange story: at its heart lies the age-old mystery of collaboration between human being and beast, in which, in the right hands, a dumb, powerful, half-ton brute not only consents to serve the feeble biped on its back but does so sometimes with an enthusiasm that seems indistinguishable from the conscious pursuit of human goals.
What follows is a quest to recover the lost life of one of the bravest, oddest, most unjustly forgotten figures in all the annals of sport. Our first steps will be tentative: there are multiple trails to pick up, personal, sporting and historical. But soon they converge, and the pace quickens. They intersect at a climactic moment in the tragedy of the 20th century, when all too many Europeans failed to rise to the challenge of their times, and Lata found herself riding with the hopes of a doomed nation – and a failing democratic project – on her shoulders.
There are many reasons for rescuing Lata Brandisová’s story from oblivion. Only two really matter. She stood up for what was right. And she was that rarest kind of sporting hero: one who achieved what was generally agreed to be impossible.
2.
The little countess
It is not immediately obvious which child is which, but you can easily guess the one destined for greatness. Even as an eight-year-old, Lata has a strange, ungovernable air. Her seven siblings glower or simper with varying degrees of submission or resentment at the photographer’s demands. Their tired-eyed mother sits tensely in the middle of the composition. Lata, fair-haired and serious, seems detached. She leans slightly for a better view past her brother and gazes intently into the distance beyond the photographer’s shoulder. Her grey eyes are alert, but she is deep in her own thoughts. Others in the tableau may well be
more prone to mischief. Lata has a more subversive quality: independence.
This is the heroine of our story: Marie Immaculata Brandisová, fifth child of the Count and Countess Brandis – a noble family with Austrian roots who lived in the twilight years of the Habsburg empire, in the central European region of Bohemia (later part of Czechoslovakia and now in the Czech Republic).
You could guess their approximate status without knowing their title. All eight children in the picture are scrubbed, brushed and formally attired. The girls wear stiff, matching dresses, with lace bib collars; the boy wears a heavy suit. The two eldest sisters keep watch at the back for signs of mutiny. The whole tableau creaks with upper-class respectability.
Yet there is less to the Brandis family’s privilege than meets the eye; and what there is of it is fragile. In contrast to most tales of sporting greatness, this is a riches to rags story.
The studio photograph was taken in 1903: a time when the Czech lands of the Austro-Hungarian empire were awash with inherited wealth. In the lushly wooded hills south-west of Prague, noble families lived in chateaux that would not have looked out of place next to Versailles. Even today, you gasp when you see them: the Colloredo-Mansfelds’ seat in Dobříš; the Schirndings’ in Mníšek pod Brdy; the Schwarzenbergs’ in Orlík; the Pálffys’ at Březnice; the mighty royal castle at Karlštejn. Yet the Brandis chateau in Řitka – right in the centre of this belt of architectural splendour – was little more than a large farmhouse by comparison: a stucco-fronted quadrangle, straggled with ivy, with stables along one side of the sloping courtyard, a granary on another, staff quarters on a third and just one low, two-storey block available on the north side for the count, the countess and their fast-growing family.
Their financial resources were barely adequate even for that. Count Brandis, observed one snide neighbour, ‘is more blessed with children than with earthly possessions’. By normal standards, of course, he was fabulously fortunate. The 500-hectare estate, about seventeen miles from Prague, originally included three villages, two farms, several fish ponds, a brewery, a distillery, a brickworks, a forest packed with game and a dependent, rent-paying population of more than 300 people. It needed careful managing, and the revenues were modest; but it was a lot better than having no estate at all.