VANDALS damaged a mural in honour of war heroes...while the rest of the country paid tribute to our Armed Forces.

Canvey residents and councillors have been left absolutely fuming as yet another Canvey seafront mural was targeted on Armed Forces Day.

The mural at The Point, Canvey, honours war heroes as two planes crashed on the island during the Second World War.

Chas Mumford, Tory councillor for Canvey East, said he was instrumental in getting the funding for this project to cover cost of materials.

He said: “While most of Canvey was commemorating Armed Forces Day it seems others had different ideas.

“These people doing this could be a similar age to the men pictured at the time of the war and their deaths.

“These vandals can’t have any idea of what people went through in the Second World War.

“They went through all that and then some idiots have come along and done all this damage.

“I think it’s disgusting, and as I was involved with this I have strong feelings about what has happened.”

He said he has no idea where the people who damaged the mural are from.

Mr Mumford said that there are so many community groups who work so hard to clean, tidy and improve the seafront and beaches on the island, but a minority seek to destroy it.

He said that the vandalism was “very distressing and disheartening”.

Colin Letchford, who runs Friends of Concord Beach community group, was alerted to the damage and went to help clean the art work.

He and group, which works to keep Concord Beach tidy, were carrying out volunteer jobs such as watering, grass cutting and litter picking, when they were informed. He went to the mural and cleaned off the paint.

Artist, Richard Ashton, then went and repainted the affected parts.

Mr Letchford said: “I just don’t understand why people would do this.

“I am glad that we were able to clean it off and restore it and now it looks as good as new.

“I don’t think this is related to the other incidents, the covering up of the dancing mural was nasty.

“We will just carry on and won’t let them win.” In 2015, The Open Arts Group, a Hadleigh charity managed within South Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (SEPT), spent more than three months painting the mural, which features the names and faces of the ten crew members who perished in the 1944 crash.

Two B17 Flying Fortress bombers collided over the Thames Estuary, with one crashing onto Canvey Point.

Barbara Tarbox and her husband John travelled from Virginia, USA, on behalf of Barbara’s father, Dick Andrews – the only living survivor of the crash - to visit the mural in 2015.

Last month two other Canvey seafront murals were damaged and destroyed.

The first was on Canvey’s sea wall near Seaview Road, and showed a couple dancing.

It was painted for husband and wife Kevin and Sandra Crane late last summer.

Sadly, Sandra has since died.

Sharon Vane, 44, from Southend who created the works was forced to restore it days later.

The second was on Thorney Bay Beach, Canvey and was covered in mud and mess.

This prompted calls from residents to install CCTV at the island seafront to tackle the issue.