"Tom Townsend has written a compelling story of World War II...and has just the right touch."-JoAnn W Martin in the Review of Texas Books Spring 2006 Gypsy Prince was born small, the last foal of an of an old German war horse who had survived World War I. The stablemaster expected that because of his small size, the horse would end up pulling a beer wagon. But it was the late 1930s, and the Reich needed every horse for the conflict to come. And it needed all the expertise it could find to care for the horses, and so Gypsy Prince, and Hans the stable boy who had looked after the horse, ended up in the same unit of the German Army paired for the duration of the conflict. They go into battle on the Eastern Front as part of the invasion of the Soviet Union. Together they make it as far as Stalingrad, where with the Russians encircling the Germans, Gypsy Prince is turned loose rather than be turned into a stew for the hungry troops. With extraordinary luck, he makes it through enemy lines back to the German forces, where he is once again pressed into the war effort. This time he is shipped to the Western Front where he is taken and used by the French Resistance after the invasion at Normandy. Eventually, the horse finds himself loose and travels through France to German. He crosses the Rhine at Remagen just ahead of the American troops and continues to make his way across the countryside until he reaches the farm where he was born. Through the eyes of the horse and the perspective of his interaction with humans-kind and unkind-Tom Townsend has provided a very basic and comprehensible history of the Second World War. This perspective is superb at allowing kids to see the values of the participants in the war without being didactic or preachy.