Educated at Harrow School, Gordon Alexander was a stockbroker with his family’s firm of J.D. Alexander and Co.

Although he also excelled at sailing and golf it was as a fencer that he enjoyed success. He was the British champion at the foil and competed, though with little success, in that discipline and also in the epée at the Olympic Games of Stockholm.

At the outbreak of the First World War Alexander joined the British Army, serving with the 10th (Stock Exchange) Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers in France before accepting a commission into the 10th East Surreys in 1916.

In April 1917, Lieutenant Alexander was then serving with the 13th East Surrey regiment at the attack on Villers Plouich in the North of France when a soldier under his command was wounded by an artillery shell in the process of digging a trench.

Alexander was bandaging the soldier’s wound when a further shell scored a direct hit on the two men killing them instantly.

A fellow officer, in a letter to Alexander’s father said: “He died the death of a hero and deserved the V.C.” For his bravery, he was mentioned in dispatches in February 1918,