Vandals Deface WWII Memorial with Hammer and Sickle

A U.S. Air Force veteran and his friends are cleaning up a World War II memorial in east Charlotte’s Evergreen Cemetery after vandals defaced it, spray-painting over hundreds of names of Mecklenburg County residents who died in the war.

Images show the memorial covered graffiti reading, “Glory to the day of heroism June 19, 1986.” According to WBTV, the phrase “appears to correspond to the Peruvian prison massacres of 1986, when 224 people died in a series of riots.”

The vandals painted yellow over a phrase of the memorial reading, “Dedicated to the memory of the Mecklenburg heroes of World War II who made the supreme sacrifice that you might live in liberty, freedom and peace.” Vandals also emblazoned a red hammer and sickle on the memorial.

Wayne White, a U.S. Air Force veteran, recruited friends to assist in cleaning up the memorial. He told FOX 46 Charlotte that the names inscribed on the structure are veterans who “deserve the honor, respect, and dignity”:

The news comes as protesters across the nation take aim at monuments and statues, from Christopher Columbus to George Washington.

“What we’re seeing across the country is really quite confusing,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said on Monday, as leftists across the country attempt to tear down statues of founding fathers and spiritual leaders, in addition to Confederate monuments.

As Breitbart News detailed:

She noted from the podium that leftists were defacing statues of Ghandi, Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, and abolitionist Matthias Baldwin.

“At the same time we’re being told that George Washington’s statue needs to come down and Thomas Jefferson’s statue needs to come down,” she said. “Where do you draw the line?”

Violent rioters vandalized a statue of Ghandi in front of the Indian Embassy on June 2 in Washington, DC, leading the United States to officially apologize to India. In Great Britain, protesters defaced a statue of Gandhi on June 7.

Protesters also attempted to tear down the statue of Andrew Jackson in D.C.’s Lafayette Park on Monday evening, to no avail.

President Trump said on Tuesday that he will soon sign an executive order aimed at the protesters targeting statues and monuments across the country.

“We are looking at long-term jail sentences for these vandals and these hoodlums and these anarchists, and agitators,” Trump said. “They’re bad people. They don’t love our country, and they’re not taking down our monuments.”