Geert,

I have the complete works of the man but didn't open it in decennies. What I know is that he was a great German dramatist, among the greatest of the 19th century.
Poets of the Realist, Expressionist, Nationalist, and Existentialist movements in France and Germany saw their prototype in Kleist, a poet whose demonic genius
had foreseen modern problems of life and literature.
Kleist was born in Frankfurt an der Oder on October 18, 1777, into a prominent military family that had produced eighteen Prussian generals.
He was educated privately until the age of eleven, when he went to the French Gymnasium in Berlin. He joined the Prussian army at the age of fifteen and participated in the 1793 Rhine campaign against the French, in the rank of corporal even as his family was extremely military oriented. In 1795 he was transferred to Osnabruck just before peace was made between France and Prussia. He returned to Potsdam in the rank of 3rd lieutnant ? (vaandrig ) and afterwards promoted to 2nd llieuenant
Even as a career as officer became in sight, he left the army to go to university of Frankfurt where he studied exact sciences, law and philisophy.

I don't know if he wrote somthing about his career in the army

What's interesting isthat in 1806 he was arrested in Berlin by the French on suspicion of espionage and was emprisoned for several months.

Beste wensen
Marc