Horses and the US military worked together for a long, long time; I believe the last surviving US Cavalry horse was named Black Jack and was part of President Kennedy's funeral processional.
My favorite story of horses in wartime is from WWII.
http://www.historynet.com/patton-res...-stallions.htm
Sneaking 350 horses out of an area given by treaty to one of the hungriest countries on the continent because no form of art should be lost to the world. WOW.
One of the most famous modern Arabian horses bred in Russia was a bright red chestnut stallion named *Muscat.
http://www.windmasterfarms.com/f_muscat.htm
When a US farm bought him from the Russian government, in order to export him they had to get him to a western European port city. Along the way, it turns out, his actual name was left off his export papers as much as possible because they had to trailer him through several unfriendly countries
highly likely to confiscate him. His distinctive high white stockings and blaze with a big dot in it made it a very tense trip--he was extremely recognizable at that point in time. His father, *Salon (the * in front of an Arab horse's name means it was exported from its country of birth) spent his own last few years in the US with a stud fee of $25,000 in the 80s. Sadly, *Muscat did not live in the US for long; whoever bought him decided that a stallion who had only bred by AI in Russia could start doing "live cover" breeding at the age of 24 and in the middle of a heat wave. Poor bugger did manage to breed a very few mares before heatstroke and unfamiliar levels of excitement caused him to drop of a massive heart attack.