Gatling gun a godsend for horses?

Jo Kerrigan’s recent article on War Horse prompted me to go and see the play. The plot concerns a foal named Joey and Albert, the youth who owns and loves him.

With the outbreak of war in 1914 Joey, now fully grown, is sold to the army and taken to the front in France. He serves on both the British and German sides of the trenches. Entangled in barbed wire in no man’s land, he is rescued while the combatants hold their fire. The British soldier and his German counterpart shake hands; Joey, as equine messiah, is an agent of peace and reconciliation.