Free Republic

The graves of 10 British soldiers killed during World War I were vandalised last weekend in a military cemetery near this northern French town, police said. Their tombstones were broken or pulled out of the ground and some were stolen, police said. The site, the Hibers Trench cemetery, is managed by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and holds the remains of 133 British and three Canadians soldiers, most of them killed during a German offensive in the area in April 1917. Police said they had taken shoe prints from near the desecrated graves and were looking for the perpertrators.

LILLE, France (AP) - Vandals knocked over 45 headstones at a military cemetery for British soldiers, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission said Tuesday. Two of the markers were destroyed at the Saint Aubert Cemetery, which is near the northern city of Cambrai and is the burial site of 435 soldiers killed in World War I, most of them British. The headstones were believed to have been toppled Sunday evening, but police were still investigating, Peter Francis, spokesman for the War Graves Commission, said. In April, graffiti denouncing the U.S.-led war in Iraq was scrawled on monuments at a World War...