Patton's biographers have said:

[Patton's] poem, "Peace -- November 11, 1918" is a paean to the soldier, not of joy but of sadness, confusion, and anger. Above all else. it released his pent-up emotions and the feeling, so common among his fellow soldiers, that there was no more war to fight -- that for the first time peace had replaced the daily sight of death. In short, the "high" of war was over and only the hangover remained.

I stood in the flag-decked cheering crowd
Where all but I were gay,
And gazing on their extecy,
My heart shrank in dismay.

For theires was the joy of the "little folk"
The cruel glee of the weak,
Who, banded together, have slain the strong
Which none alone dared seak.

The Bosch we know was a hideous beast
Beyond our era's ban,
But soldiers still must honor the Hun
As a mighty fighting man.

The vice he had was strong and real
Of virtue he had none,
Yet he fought the world remorselessly
And very nearly won...

And looking forward I could see
Like a festering sewer;
Full of the fecal Pacifists
Which peace makes us endure....

None of the hold and blatant sin
The disregard of pain,
The glorious deeds of sacrefice
which follow in wars train.

Instead of these the little lives
Will blossom as before,
Pale bloom of creatures all too weak
To hear the light of war.

While we whose spirits wider range
Can grasp the joys of strife,
Will moulder in the virtuous vice
Of futile peaceful life.

We can but hope that e're we drown
'Neath treacle floods of grace,
The tuneless horns of mighty, Mars
Once more shall rouse the Race

When such times come, Oh! God of War
Grant that we pass midst strife,
Knowing once more the whitehot joy
Of taking human life.

Then pass in peace, blood-glutted Bosch
And when we too shall fall,
We'll clasp in yours our gory hands
In High Valhallas' Hall.

This poem was the first of many that flowed like a dirge from Patton's pen in the months during and after the war.

(D'Este, Patton A Genius for War, 270-71)

And yet,

No less welcome is the comfort of God's presence after the battle, when in the pitted mud of No Man's Land the body of a German he killed moments before seems to move in the night. Shockingly, the German too seems made in God's image.

Yet that damn Boche looked just like Him
Leastwise he looked like me
So why God should be partial
I don't just rightly see.

This damned God business may be bunk
I don't Just rightly know
Still, when the corpses walk at night
I'd rather believe it's so.

(Patton, 169)

And in "The Moon and the Dead" (1918),

Patton had written of twisted corpses: "Some were bit by the bullet, some were kissed by the steel, some were crushed by the cannon, but all were still how still!/The gas wreathes hung in the hollows, the blood stink rose in the air and the moon looked down in pity at the poor dead laying there."

(D'Este, 315)