Mufti by H.C. McNeile — Read

Two hours later. Vane handed his steel helmet to his batman and swung / himself into the saddle on his old grey mare. There was touch of Arab / in her, and she had most enormous feet. But she fulfilled most of the / requirements a man looks for in a war horse, which are not of necessity / those he requires in a mount with the Grafton. She scorned guns -- she / repudiated lorries, and he could lay the reins on her neck without her / ceasing to function. She frequently fell down when he did so; / but -- _c'est la guerre_. The shadows were beginning to lengthen as he / hacked out of the camp, waving a farewell hand at a badminton four, and / headed for Poperinghe.

Poperinghe lay about a mile up the road towards his destination, and / Vane had known it at intervals for over three years. He remembered it / when it had been shelled in April '15 at the time of the first gas / attack, and the inhabitants had fled in all directions. Then gradually / it had become normal again, until, after the Passchendaele fighting of / 1917, it had excelled itself in gaiety. And now in May 1918 it was / dead once more, with every house boarded up and every window shuttered. / The big cobbled square; the brooding, silent churches, the single / military policeman standing near his sand-bagged sentry-box -- and in the / distance the rumble of a wagon going past the station -- such was / Poperinghe as Vane saw it that evening.