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What a way to treat our heroes; ATALE OF TWO VERY DIFFERENT YOUNG MEN; Phil Laing is the 19-year-old who, during a student binge, defiled a war memorial wreath placed by the family of Edwin Ievers, who fell at Passchendaele aged 29.

Article Excerpt
Byline: Paul Harris and Jaya Narain

THEY are separated by the best part of a century and a lifetime of change.

One volunteered to fight for his country and made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom.

The other became part of a culture where respect has no meaning and courage comes from a bottle of cheap booze.

Edwin Ievers and Phil Laing never met of course. But on the drink-sodden streets of modern Britain, their paths crossed in the most sickening way.

Laing, a 19-year-old ex-public schoolboy studying sports technology at university, was among thousands of students on an organised drinking binge in Sheffield.

Edwin Ievers was the name on a wreath that the soldier's family had placed on a memorial to those who fell in World War I. They were linked when Laing, barely able to stand, defiled the memory of the dead by urinating on the memorial. He drenched the Ievers family's Armistice Day poppies before tottering away to collapse in a shop doorway....

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