‘I DIDN’T MEAN TO CAUSE OFFENCE’
Joe Burn speaks to the man responsible for putting a face mask on this war memorial...
ATATTOOIST has revealed he climbed onto a war memorial to place a mask on the soldier’s face to lift spirits – and meant no disrespect.
Ross Johnston, who tattoos under the moniker ‘Deaddark’, came up with the idea on a walk to visit his mum who he has been checking on during lockdown.
The Fenton lad, who lives close to the statue and regularly passes by, insists he did not mean to cause offence and holds those who paid the ultimate price fighting for their country in the highest regard.
Instead, he says he just wanted to do something to make people smile.
The 35-year-old said: “I walk past the war memorial to go and check on my mum and I thought it would be fun if that geezer had a mask on. I suppose it’s sort of like, they protected us so we’re protecting him. So I just went up there, climbed up and put a mask on him.
“I put a post on Facebook and it got loads of likes but two people commented saying ‘isn’t that a war memorial?’ implying disrespect. I have family who’ve served in the forces and I think they’d be almost guaranteed to find it funny. There’s no disrespect intended. I walked past this afternoon and there were loads of people taking photos of it. I thought ‘oh **** !’”
Ross added: “So the reason why I did this was because I thought that they have died and served our country so we could be here today. It’s a sign of respect for our fallen soldiers so I put a mask on him to protect him and to remind people to stay safe, stay alert.” However, councillor Paul Shotton,
below, who represents the Fenton East Ward, wasn’t sure everybody would see it as a lighthearted stunt.
He said: “I suppose that is one way of looking at it but if he’s done that in a lighthearted manner we’ve got to ask if there’s any damage done. “It’s not that long ago we had a lot of vandalism done on the war memorial in Fenton and the late councillor Stan Bate had raised many thousands of pounds in a community whip round to pay for the railings and seats. “A few years ago the soldier’s arms and rifle were knocked off and this is the sort of behaviour that could cause that to happen again.
“It cost a lot of money to get it fixed as it basically had to be resculpted.
“People get very emotive around war memorials and whilst it was done to lift spirits, I’m not sure everyone would see it that way.”