Seven men have reportedly been arrested after a pair of World War One plaques disappeared from the grounds of Christ Church Luton in Chatham.
The plaques went missing on Friday night, to the distress of vicar, the Rev Andrea Leonard, who described the theft as "terrible" in comments to the BBC.
On Wednesday both plaques were discovered in different scrap yards in Essex. Sadly, one of the plaques has been described as “substantially damaged”.
According to Kent Police, two men in their mid-twenties from around Dartford were arrested. Subsequently five more people were arrested, with ages ranging from 22 to 51 years old.
Rev Leondard publicly praised the unknown person who found one of the plaques and alerted the authorities.
"Hats off to the person, who wants to obviously remain anonymous, but who had the integrity to phone the police and say 'I've got something here that you want," she told BBC Radio Kent.
"He actually spoke to me and he said he looked at the list and thought, 'those poor lads that gave everything, they don't deserve this'."
The memorial had been in place for over 100 years, and listed the 163 people from Chatham who died in the First world War.
Leonard spoke of the great value the memorials had to the local community, especially for the relatives of those named on them.
"It was terrible when we discovered that they were gone," she said.
"We just could not believe it because it's not only the church, it's the whole wider community."
