The father of a British soldier who was killed in Iraq yesterday has paid tribute to his son. 29 year-old Corporal Matthew Cornish, who was married with two young children, sustained injuries after a mortar attack on a base in Basra. He was rushed to hospital, but he later died. He was the first soldier to be killed in an attack on a UK military compound in Iraq. "I'm proud of him as a soldier and as a son. He did the Army proud," 60 year-old Robin Cornish said of his son, the one hundred and fifteenth British soldier to be killed in Iraq since operations began in 2003.
Can we infer the following?
2003 was a bad year for the British.