Remembering the Fallen: on this day in 2003, Private Andrew Joseph Kelly, 3rd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, was killed in Iraq in a shooting accident at his barracks near Basra. In his last phone call with his mother, he said “"Don't worry about me, Mum. Paras always go to heaven." Even as a young boy his dream was to become a Para - a close friend said that he worked hard to get there, that he wanted to do something with his life and not just watch the world go by. His Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Lowe, said: “The loss of Private Andy Kelly is especially tragic. He was a young man full of energy and life with a long career in The Parachute Regiment ahead of him. Andy had recently joined the 3rd Battalion, having come from the Infantry Training Centre where he had completed basic training and proved himself to be fit, mentally agile, professional, and highly determined. It had always been Andy’s ambition to be a Parachute Regiment soldier and he was welcomed from the moment he arrived. Andy was quiet but confident and likeable. He had just started to make new friends and settle down into post-war operations.” Andrew, from Tavistock, died less than two months after his eighteenth birthday.