Arrests as stolen WW1 plaque found in scrapyard
Two men have been arrested following the theft of two WW1 plaques from a Kent war memorial, police have said.
Two military memorial plaques disappeared from the grounds of Christ Church Luton in Chatham between 22:00 BST on Friday and 10:00 on Saturday.
Kent Police said one of the plaques was recovered from a scrapyard in Essex on Wednesday.
The force said it has arrested a 26-year-old man and a 25-year-old man, both from the Dartford area.
Christ Church Luton's priest in charge, the Reverend Andrea Leonard, told BBC Radio Kent on Thursday that she remains hopeful the other plaque will be found.
She said: "Hats off to the person, who wants to obviously remain anonymous, but who had the integrity to phone the police and say 'I've got something here that you want'.
"He actually spoke to me and he said he looked at the list and thought 'those poor lads that gave everything, they don't deserve this'."
Kent Police said it is trying to find the second plaque and appealed for anyone with information about the missing plaques to get in touch.
The plaques commemorate 163 people from the Chatham area who died in WW1 and each weigh 93kg.
The memorial, which has been in place for 105 years, is "priceless" to the parish and relatives of the soldiers, Ms Leonard said.
She believes there has not yet been time for the still-missing plaque to be melted down, but that they will find a suitable replacement if they have to as "it just wouldn't be right" to a have a memorial with names missing.
"It was terrible when we discovered that they were gone," she said.
"We just could not believe it because it's not only the church, it's the whole wider community."
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Military memorial plaques stolen from churchyard
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