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It's meant to be a place of respect: Wick memorial garden targeted by vandals again





Memorial garden volunteer Yvonne Hendry replacing some of the heavy stones on Sunday.
Memorial garden volunteer Yvonne Hendry replacing some of the heavy stones on Sunday.

Wick's World War II memorial garden has been targeted by vandals for the second time in just over a week.

About a dozen heavy coping stones were deliberately dislodged from the flagstone wall at the garden in Bank Row.

Some of the stones ended up being split as they struck each other when hitting the ground on the grassy side of the wall.

The damage occurred between Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning.

Several stones had been pushed off in an earlier incident.

The garden was created on the site where 15 people lost their lives in an air raid in July 1940. It commemorates the victims of that attack as well as the three people who died in October the same year in a raid on Hill Avenue, near the town’s RAF base.

It is looked after by volunteers from the community group Second World War Air Raid Victims Wick. Individual stones embedded in the wall are engraved with the victims' first names.

Volunteer Yvonne Hendry said: "It is very disappointing that this should happen twice in just over a week. There hadn't been any damage all summer until then.

"There's a small team of volunteers that give their time to maintain the garden and it just seems so senseless to damage it in this way. It is meant to be a place of respect.

"We had been working in the garden on Saturday morning and found the damage on Sunday."

Two volunteers from Wick Heritage Museum, hosting an open day in the adjacent Cowie's building, helped to put the stones back in place. Mrs Hendry pointed out that other people passing by had also stopped and offered to assist.

After a previous incident in 2021, when three sections of the wall were knocked over, Mrs Hendry said: “I am really annoyed with these mindless idiots who think they've got nothing better to do with their day than knock coping stones off a wall.

"Do people not have any respect for the purpose that the garden was created for, and the people it is in memory of?"


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