Damage common across the country

Damage and desecration is fairly common at war memorials across the UK.

Statistics suggest plaques, statues, stone crosses and other tributes are being targeted at the rate of more than one a week.

Tayside and Fife has not been immune to the problems seen up and down the country, and many incidents have hit the headlines in recent years.

In Perthshire there was an outcry after a thief stripped three bronze plaques from a memorial in Milnathort in a bid to pay for legal highs in 2013.

The damage cost £8,000, and the memorial itself bore the name of the thief’s own greatgrandfather.

Rob Scott, Fife chairman of The Black Watch Association, branded damage to the Glenrothes War Memorial – which went up comparatively recently following the loss of local men in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts – as “shocking” after lights surrounding the tribute were smashed by vandals in 2013.

In the same year veterans described the theft of a bronze statue of a soldier from a memorial in East Wemyss as “disgusting”.

It is not always vandals or thieves causing heartache.

There was anger in Angus when BT Openreach engineers left loose sods of turf beside a 19ft memorial in Newtyle.

Other high-profile incidents south of the border have also sparked anger.

A 19-year-old Sheffield Hallum student caused outrage when pictured urinating on a memorial in Sheffield and was subsequently charged.

Thieves who stole an ‘eternal light’ flame from a memorial in Wales honouring one of the 14 servicemen who died in the 2006 Nimrod crash in Afghanistan were widely criticised in the media.

This summer, veterans called those who stole flagstones from the Whitworth Memorial Gardens in Lancashire during the Somme centenary weekend the “lowest of the low”.