What is the connection between David Malouf's poem "Ladybird" and a solider going to war and loosing his innocence? How can we draw connections between the two?

In this poem, the children who are visited by the ladybird go through three distinct experiences. The first is their sense of wonder at the ladybird's presence. They see the ladybird as a "reward for some good deed." The next turn the poem takes is when the children sing the song "Ladybird Ladybird" and the speaker refers to them using the "same breath" to sing the song that they use to blow out the candles on a birthday cake. Finally, the ladybird flies away, and the children are playing with matches and accidentally set their house alight.
In this poem, the children go from having "full hearts lifted by all that was best in us" to "everything close and dear, even the air, is burning!" This is a similar transformation that happens with a young soldier who goes away to war—more accurately, that a soldier in the twentieth century or earlier might experience.
The first impression might be a similar sense of wonder, perhaps at the new environment that the soldier is in: a new country and new people. The second impression, where the children sing the song for the ladybird, includes the social aspects soldiers get: engaging with other soldiers and developing camaraderie. This is an important step, as it can give way to the callousness and lack of care that the soldiers develop, which leads to their final act: setting the house alight and realizing that "the world is alive and dangerous."