Gordon Pritchard

Who was Gordon Pritchard?

Gordon Alexander Pritchard was a corporal in the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards regiment of the British Army who served in the Iraq War until he was killed in a bomb explosion in Umm Qasr. He was the 100th British soldier to die in the conflict.

Pritchard was born in the British Military Hospital in Munster, Germany, the son of a serving Royal Scots Dragoon Guard. Pritchard and his family moved home frequently in his childhood, living in Catterick, Berlin, London, Fallingbostel and Düsseldorf. He was educated at Queen Victoria School, Dunblane and the King's School in Gutersloh, Germany.

Pritchard joined the Royal Armoured Corps in 1992 aged 18, and was assigned as a gunner to a tank squadron based in Warminster. In 1995 he was posted to the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, and was sent to Bosnia in 1996. He became a husband and father before being posted to Kosovo in 2000, he later returned to England to become a highly capable instructor at the Army Training Regiment in Winchester. He returned to active duty in January 2004, taking command of a Challenger 2 tank in The Desert Rats or the UK 7th Armoured Brigade. He was sent to Iraq and was deployed to Umm Qasr in October 2005, and on 31 January the following year he was killed when his vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb that also injured three other soldiers.