I was a poet of war (General Patton)

May God have mercy on my enemies, not me.
I was a poet of war.
War was everything.
I would have liked to die in battle,
as a soldier should.
Instead I died in bed, paralyzed,
a mockery of a soldier.
Fortunately, I was buried with my soldiers.
My battlefields were familiar to me,
I had fought on them before,
when as a Roman legionnaire,
as a Napoleonic warrior.
My destiny is to be reborn, as a warrior.

Poet's note. Panzer General Patton believed he had already been a soldier in the Roman Empire.