‘I hope they’re caught and suitably punished’: Britain’s last Dambuster, 97, blasts ‘disgraceful’ gang who carried out co-ordinated 12-hour paint attacks on at least FOUR memorials to Britain’s war dead
Britain’s last Dambuster has blasted the gang who toured central London throwing white paint over multiple war memorials and a Winston Churchill statue during a 12-hour vandalism spree.
It comes as the Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park, built to remember the 55,573 airmen who never came home during the Second World War, was damaged for the fourth time since the Queen opened it in 2012.
The 97-year-old Bomber Command veteran Johnny Johnson said: ‘What a disgrace, such mindless vandalism.
‘How disrespectful to the nearly 58,000 people who gave their lives so that these thugs have the freedom to carry out such acts. I hope they are caught soon, and suitably punished.’
Wreaths left for the dead and a photograph of airman Stanley Forsyth, who died recently aged 98, have also been splattered with paint in a ‘senseless’ and ‘insulting’ attack.
The mob then targeted the nearby Canada Memorial, which commemorates all Canadians killed during the First and Second World Wars.
The same vandals also appear to have hurled white paint on the statue of Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt on New Bond Street and the Royal Marines Memorial in The Mall.
The co-ordinated attacks, all carried out under the cover of darkness last night or this morning, are being investigated by the Met as veterans and their families have been left angry and upset.
Vernon Morgan, 97, who flew Lancaster bombers in the Second World War, told MailOnline today: ‘It’s a disgrace. One wonders what motivates such things, when all they did was their duty helping this country in a war’.
He added: ‘These men gave their lives so that this country could be free.’