Wickedness. That is perhaps the best word to describe the latest attack on the war memorial outside St Michael and All Angels Church in Cottingley just months after it was rededicated by the Prince of Wales.

The new memorial replaced one destroyed by vandals who had used the head of the figure of Christ as a football - an appalling act of sacrilege and a deep affront to all Christians. Now the new figure of Christ has been ripped from the wooden cross and had its arm torn off before being dumped in mud.

On his visit to the village last September Prince Charles condemned the "shallow-rooted" vandals who had carried out the earlier attack on the memorial. That was a polite description. Whoever would perpetrate such an act is scum. Small wonder that many ex-Servicemen who survived the conflicts which claimed the lives of those commemorated on memorials such as this despair of what has become of the country they fought to protect.

An act of vandalism like this is a sickening insult to the memory of those who perished. It can only have been carried out with malice. It is inconceivable that whoever did it was unaware of the previous vandalism and the upset it caused. With that in mind, they set out to repeat the offence - presumably because they get some sort of kick out of wrecking things which ordinary, decent people hold dear.

They must not be allowed to get away with it again. Let's hope there is a good response to the police appeal for information and that they are quickly caught and properly punished.