Men, Women and Guns by H.C. McNeile

When Jim Denver told Lady Alice Conway that he was sane again, he spoke no more than the truth. A few weeks in France, and then a shattered arm had brought him back to England with more understanding than he had ever possessed before. He had gone out the ordinary Englishman -- casual, sporting, easy going, somewhat apathetic; he had come back a thinker as well, at times almost a dreamer. It affects different men in different ways -- but none escape. And that is what those others cannot understand -- those others who have not been across. Even the man who comes back on short leave hardly grasps how the thing has changed him: hardly realises that the madness is still in his soul. He has not time; his leave is just an interlude. He is back again in France almost before he realises he has left it. In mind he has never left it.

There is humour there in plenty -- farce even; boredom, excitement, passion, hatred. Every human emotion runs its full gamut in the Land of Topsy Turvy; in the place where the life of a man is no longer three-score years and ten, but just so long as the Great Reaper may decide and no more. And you are caught in the whirl -- you are tossed here and there by a life of artificiality, a life not of one's own seeking, but a life which, having once caught you, you are loath to let go.