CARDIFF woman Karen Robb has appealed for the safe return of her Anzac Day tribute to her late veteran father, after it was stolen on Sunday evening.
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Ms Robb bought and started hanging her Lest We Forget flag from a broom handle inserted into the nearby school crossing poles on Wansbeck Valley Road in Cardiff for Anzac Day 2020.
Her beloved father Barry Spaulding, who served with the Royal Australian Navy in the Korean War, had passed away just a month earlier.
Ms Robb again hung the flag and turned on some battery operated candles at 3pm on Sunday. She said someone cut the cable ties holding the broom handle in place and stole the flag sometime between 5pm and 8pm.
"I can't believe it, it's very, very disappointing," Ms Robb said on Monday.
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"I'm pretty devastated. I had lots of tears last night and it just broke my heart. It was disrespectful to him and that was my tribute to him. It's very heartless."
Ms Robb said she had a simple message for the people who had stolen the flag.
"Last night on social media I did say 'You don't deserve the freedom that these men and women fought for you to have'," she said.
"I'm really disappointed in them and they should be showing respect for why you're able to live the life that you have."
Ms Robb said the theft had made a tough time even more difficult.
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She is currently in isolation, which means she was not able to attend a dawn service, march or visit Cardiff RSL, which displayed crosses bearing the names of members who have died, including Mr Spaulding's.
He passed away on March 28, 2020, and had only started speaking about his service, with other veterans and attending Anzac Day events in the last few years of his life, after experiencing post traumatic stress disorder.
Ms Robb said her father had been a petty officer on aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne when it sliced through the HMAS Voyager off Jervis Bay in 1964.
This killed 82 men in Australia's worst peacetime naval disaster.
Ms Robb asked Newcastle residents to keep an eye out for the flag, including in their children's possessions. "If they could return it that would be delightful."
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