LA war memorial covered up after graffiti vandalism
A pair of Marines on leave from their base in California’s high desert answered the Memorial Day call May 29, bringing dozens of American flags to try to dress up a vandalized Vietnam War memorial until it can be repaired.
The wall, adjacent to a Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus yard in the city’s Venice Beach section, was tagged earlier in the week. Metro officials said Monday they had hoped to work with community volunteers to clean it up quickly but discovered it was too badly damaged.
“We were initially hopeful that the graffiti could be removed without damaging the memorial, but Metro’s contractor says the damage is too extensive,” the agency said in a statement.
Metro workers instead covered it with a tarp until it can be repaired.
That’s when Pfc. Joseph Dudley showed up with a friend and the flags, arriving from the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, Calif., where he’s stationed.
“Me and my buddy, we were down in Venice Beach with my parents for the weekend and we heard what happened so we bought $100 worth of flags and are just down here to try to hang them up. Just to kind of give back to the people who are on the wall,” he said.
The memorial, dedicated in 1992, contains the names of 2,273 prisoners or soldiers missing in action from the Vietnam War. It was spray-painted from one end to the other with large graffiti tags. Metro officials said many of its names will have to be re-inscribed.
“All of a sudden for this to happen after almost 30 years is just appalling,” said construction contractor Jon Scudder, himself a Marine veteran.
Scudder had hoped he and other volunteers could repair it by Memorial Day, but now they’ll have to wait.
“It’s like putting graffiti on the wall in Washington,” he said of the national Vietnam War Memorial. “You just don’t do that. I don’t what’s going on in people’s minds.” AP
NATO summit to raise military presence in Poland, region
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said May 30 that an upcoming “landmark summit” will enhance the alliance’s defensive and deterrent presence in Poland and in the region, but decisions as to the number still haven’t been finalized.
Stoltenberg spoke in Warsaw, which will host a July 8-9 NATO summit that will give security guarantees that Poland and other nations on the alliance’s eastern flank have been seeking, concerned about a resurgent Russia.
He said that several battalions will be placed in Poland, the Baltic States and elsewhere in the region that will raise NATO presence in troops, equipment, prepositioning and infrastructure. The U.S. will be adding an armored brigade.
Stoltenberg said the exact numbers and locations of the enhanced NATO troop presence are still being debated and the decisions will be made before the summit. It will be a rotational, international presence, he said.
“So let me be clear: there will be more NATO troops in Poland after the Warsaw Summit, to send a clear signal that an attack on Poland will be considered an attack on the whole alliance,” Stoltenberg said after meeting Polish President Andrzej Duda.
Duda stressed that it’s crucial for the summit to show that NATO is united and shows internal solidarity in the face of threats from the East and South.
Both leaders said the summit will also decide on ways of helping build stability in partner nations like Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova in the east and Iraq, Jordan and Tunisia in the south. AP