My Russian grandfather

Min ryska farfar som ung soldat, sittande på sin kära häst Lady.  Eller jag antar att hästen är Lady. Så ung han är, kanske bara lite på 20.
  Jag fick det här fotot alldeles nyligen och tycker det är så fint. Jag vet inte var det är taget, i Ryssland eller i Frankrike, dit han åkte med en rysk expeditionskår på vintern 1917 för att strida med fransmännen vid Västfronten. Han åkte via Murmansk, järnvägsförbindelsen mellan Petersburg och Murmansks hamn hade just öppnats. 

This is my Russian grandfather as a young soldier during WW1, sitting on his beloved horse, Lady. I saw this photo only very recently and it moves me so much. He looks so young and carefree. I remember him from my childhood as a very quiet and sad old man. The war crippled him and ruined his health. Shell wounds, poisonous gas. I remember him always coughing, and my father tapping  his back while he coughed. He died in Helsinki in 1963.
  I post this picture for my writer and artist collegues whom I hope to meet next week in St. Petersburg.
  And what happened to my grandfather's beautiful horse? Perhaps like in Pushkin' s poem:

He spake: "And must we two part now?"
Caressing with a kindly touch,
His servant's silky neck. "Old friend,
Together, we have weathered much
Victoriously: but all things end."

Translation A. L. Pogosky, verse W.W. Gibson