War Horse/Headscratchers


 * Why didn't Albert's dad just tell Captain Loki why he needed 40 guineas in exchange for Joey? ("I can't save my home with only 20 guineas.") The dad should've considered that someone might take pity on him and his family, and thus give him the money. It would've been less difficult (and more honorable) than arguing for a price and making up all those compliments that he doesn't even know himself if they're true.
 * Why did  Last time I checked, you're supposed to be intelligent in order to make it into the Army. Why didn't he hold his breath and close his eyes, and then rush forward until he found the junction that Albie was going into?
 * It was World War One, intelligence testing for soldiers was barely coming into being, and that was only in the US Army. Elsewhere they were taking pretty much everyone they could get who was able-bodied and wasn't actually known to be mentally handicapped. (In-universe, they took Albert too, who in the play is illiterate and in the film, though literate, seems a bit simple.) Inability to act decisively in a trench filled with mustard gas isn't a matter of IQ, in any case, I figured he was pretty stunned and IIRC we never do see what he did after the gas came up. Also, while not breathing in mustard gas would help it burn less of your mucous membranes, and the severe blistering burns mustard gas causes are not immediate, by the time he was aware of the gas, taking a deep breath to hold his breath would still mean breathing it in and choking on it anyway. Even if he didn't inhale, mustard gas needn't be inhaled to take its effect on the membranes of the eyes and nose. (It also takes more awareness than you'd think, when frightened and disoriented, to remember to hold your breath in the split-second before the air is too full of gas or smoke to breathe. Speaking from experience with a house fire.) I can't remember if we see his friend immediately fall or if it's implied he dies later, but he's hardly an idiot for dying in a war with no gas mask in an unfamiliar part of the trenches. He just had really bad luck.