A photo of a father and son embracing in a Ukrainian trench has brought millions to tears.

 In the image, the white-haired father, his shoulders covered in gunpowder-stained snow, gently rests his calloused hands on his son's curled-up back—this young man, who should be studying on a university campus, is instead wrapped in a mud-caked military overcoat, fast asleep with his head on his father's lap in the sub-zero temperatures of -15 degrees Celsius.

The father and son belong to the 47th Mechanized Brigade, which has been stationed on the Donetsk front since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022. The 57-year-old veteran, Valery, had served in the Crimean crisis in 2014, and the three bullet marks on his left chest are still clearly visible. Last winter, he received a hastily written enlistment application from his only son, Ivan: "I can't let my father face the sound of gunfire alone."

According to statistics from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense in 2023, approximately 4,300 father-son pairs served together on the front lines, with 28% of these "second-generation soldiers" under the age of 25. These hands, which should be holding pens, were forced to grip rifles, measuring the depth of the trenches with their youth amidst an average of 37 artillery barrages per day.

When reinforcement orders pierced the night again, the father would secretly replace his son's bulletproof vest with his own. These soldiers, bound by blood, melted battlefield rations with their body heat and measured the distance between life and death with their breath on the steel and flesh-and-blood battlefield. Their unspoken understanding when firing back-to-back surpassed any military training manual.

Looking at the son's peaceful profile in the photo, we suddenly understood: So-called heroes are simply fathers and sons who had to be strong. They protected not only the battlefield, but also the hot soup on millions of family tables, the sound of reading in schools, and the white wedding dresses at weddings. Like and share this post to let more people see the glimmer of humanity amidst the flames of war. May every night filled with vigilance be accompanied by the cry of a dove of peace at dawn.