Lieutenant-General Sir William Forbes Gatacre KCB DSO (3 December 1843 – 18 January 1906) was a British soldier who served between 1862 and 1904 in India and various areas on the African continent.

[5] On 29 April 1882 he was promoted to lieutenant-colonel[6] and appointed to command a battalion on 28 June 1884[7] until he was made Deputy Quartermaster General in December 1885.

[11] In the following year he commanded the Third Brigade of the Chitral Relief Force,[12] and was mentioned in Lieutenant-General Sir Robert Low's dispatch of 1 May 1895.

His reputation, high after Omdurman, sank after Stormberg,[4] and he returning to England and to his pre-war posting as General Officer Commanding Eastern District from June 1900 to December 1903.

He died of fever near Gambela, Ethiopia,[20] an Anglo-Sudanese enclave leased by Emperor Menelik II, where Britain was in the process of establishing a port and customs station.

Gatacre had a reputation of working his men hard, with his energetic style of leadership leading to subordinate officers often resenting him for not letting them get on with their jobs in their own way.

[9] William Gatacre married twice, first in 1876 to Alice Susan Louisa, third daughter of Anthony La Touche Kerwen, Dean of Limerick.