In Flanders fields...

... the poppies grow. That poem was written in 1915 by John McCrae as a result of the carnage suffered in the Great War where blood and guts fertilized the fields of war along with nitrogen deposits from the explosives used.

It is a call to keep fighting, on and on, to beat the foe. For what?
Apart from bringing down one empire in order to temporarily bolster another one, what was achieved? A generation of young men was lost and mangled on both sides of the conflict.

The conflict degenerated into a slogging match using artillery shells and whosoever was able to keep up the barrage the longest won the day.

Fast forward 100+ years and we are back in the same hole in Ukraine where two empires are dishing it out using cannon shells and young bodies to fertilize the fields of that country again. Nothing new in the last 1000 or so years.