Quote of the Day (General Patton, on Being “Born a Fighter”)

“So forever in the future,
Shall I battle as of yore,
Dying to be born a fighter,
But to die again, once more.”—General George S. Patton Jr., “Through a Glass Darkly” (1918)

On this date, in 1945, General George S. Patton Jr., died in Germany from injuries sustained earlier in the month in an auto accident.

“Old Blood and Guts” was not made for the peacetime world, as evidenced by his removal as head of the occupation of Bavaria for typically impolitic remarks regarding de-nazification policies and relations with the Soviets.

What’s extraordinary about the larger poem from which the above quote comes--written while the future legend was serving in World War I, where he became the U.S. Army’s foremost master of the tank--is his belief in reincarnation, a near-mystical belief that he had fought in other battlefields--and would do so again.

You might say, then, that he not only felt “born a fighter,” but reborn a fighter.