The widow of a Black Watch captain accidentally killed by an American soldier aims to return her war widow’s medal in disgust at the Government’s failure to get justice for him.
Mum-of-two Linda Sprouting plans to hand the Elizabeth Cross back to Prince Charles who awarded it to her after 46-year-old Dean’s death in Iraq in 2018, describing him as an “outstanding soldier”.
Now she thinks she was given it to shut her up.
Capt Sprouting, a veteran of Northern Ireland and Bosnia with 29 years’ service, was hit by a forklift truck during a daylight jog on a sanctioned route at the US Al Asad Airbase.
A US army investigation cleared the soldier driver of blame – but Linda, 48, claims the probe was a “whitewash”, ignored by the Ministry of Defence who didn’t want to “upset the Americans”.
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She said: “The report into my husband’s death was 300 pages... double that had been redacted.
"I asked the MoD two years ago to get the full report... nothing happened.
“It seems the MoD don’t want to push for answers.
British military police have told me evidence of negligence was so strong, a British soldier driving the truck would have been charged.”
Linda, of Falkirk, believes the MoD thought her medal would make her “go away and keep my mouth shut”.
She added: “It’s been devalued.
"I want to hand it back to Charles and tell him why. I wrote to him but his staff said he was too busy.”
Linda said sons Oliver 16 and Harry 11, had struggled over their dad’s death. “They lost their role model. I never even got an apology from the Americans.”
The MoD sympathised and said: “We liaised with US authorities during the investigation.”
Clarence House declined to comment.
