Harry

T
his is the story of Harry Wales. Harry is a daredevil pilot, soldier and bon vivant. Born into a dysfunctional family, he showed every sign of becoming a teenage
delinquent
, experimenting with drugs and drinking more than was good for him on his nightly rounds of clubs frequented by the more louche members of society.

He is better known as Prince Harry, third – soon to be fourth – in line to the British throne. But that’s the family business. While courtiers make plans for his life, Harry Wales gets on with living it. He may be only a couple of lives away from becoming England’s next king, but there are bad guys out there to be dealt with, and women to be loved.

His grandmother is the Queen and his late mother was the most famous woman in the world – for all kinds of reasons.
But Harry Wales is Harry Wales and not a day in his life is to be wasted. If anyone had good reason to keep it in the day, it’s him. The past is the past and whatever the future holds will happen whether he likes it or not. As he was once heard to say: ‘If I have one foot in yesterday and the other in
tomorrow
, I’m in the perfect position to piss all over today.’

I make no apologies for the frequent references to his mother – particularly in the chapters dealing with his early life – for it was undoubtedly Princess Diana who moulded Harry Wales, and just about everything that happened to her had a profound effect on shaping him.

Getting people to talk about His Royal Highness was never going to be easy. When they get to rub shoulders with a member of the Royal Family, the privileged ones often tend to consider themselves part of that circle and honour-bound to protect its members’ air of mystery. One such person even quoted to me the words of the nineteenth-century essayist Walter Bagehot. He concluded that the monarchy’s survival depended largely on its mystique and distance from the masses: ‘Its mystery is its life. We must not let daylight in on magic.’ Fortunately not every royal ‘friend’ had read Bagehot and the words on the following pages of the exceptions to his decree make fascinating reading.

Those who really know Harry Wales, however, placed no such restrictions on themselves. They saw the man as I did: an individual with a healthy mind who has overcome numerous obstacles on the road to becoming not just an interesting character but an inspirational man deserving of our attention
who can comfortably withstand close scrutiny. I am obliged to those who shared their experiences of Harry so generously and I respect their wish in many cases to remain anonymous lest they be vilified by the Bagehot faction.

Now, let’s get on with it.

Chris Hutchins

April 2013

T
ravelling on the 10.45 train from King's Cross to King's Lynn, the Queen arrived several days early to ensure that her meticulous arrangements for the 2007 family Christmas at Sandringham had been strictly adhered to. The festive holiday for her twenty-eight guests should go without a hitch. A fastidious organiser, Her Majesty even used to insist on helping maids to make her sons' beds prior to their arrival for summer holidays in her castle at Balmoral, carefully placing favourite cuddly toys on Prince Edward's until he was in his early teens.

One by one the guests arrived on Christmas Eve, headed by Charles with Camilla who was enjoying her third yuletide at the monarch's country home after the Prince had made her both an honest woman and Harry and William's stepmother in April 2005.

Prince William had not been allowed to invite Kate Middleton because they were not yet married or even engaged; similarly, Prince Andrew had to restrict his female company
to that of his daughters, Beatrice and Eugenie. Charles and Andrew's brother Edward, now the Earl of Wessex, arrived with wife Sophie as well as their daughter Louise and new son James. Princess Anne was accompanied by her husband, Timothy Laurence.

On arrival each paused in the grand entrance hall to admire the elaborately decorated tree – a Norfolk spruce taken from the 1,000-acre estate – before being ushered to their rooms.

Having changed into suitable outfits for tea, the guests assembled at precisely 4 p.m. to join the Queen and Prince Philip (who had celebrated their sixtieth anniversary the previous month) in the White Drawing Room where they enjoyed homemade scones and Earl Grey tea (‘Is there any other kind?' Queen Mary once asked). Each of them was presented by the Master of the Household with a
time-table
and room plan so they would know where and when to marshal themselves.

Then it was time to place the presents they had brought for each other on trestle tables set up in the Red Drawing Room. Sections of the tables – laid out in order of precedence – had been marked off with tape showing where each family member's gifts should be placed. In line with German tradition, the presents were then opened, for the Queen has always regarded Christmas Day as being one for religious activity, rather than giving and receiving material things.

To please the Queen, the family always compete to see who can buy the least extravagant gifts. Having learned from an earlier mistake by Princess Diana, who had bought cashmere
and other luxury presents, the Duchess of York once brought a pleasing smile to her mother-in-law's face when she gave her an ashtray which spun like a top to consume and conceal its contents. A non-smoker herself, Her Majesty said it was ‘ingenious', which is more than she had to say when she opened Harry's gift to her one year: it was a bath hat bearing the slogan ‘Ain't life a bitch!' Princess Anne hit the right spot when she selected a white leather loo seat which her brother Charles still uses.

Following the lengthy present-opening ceremony, those assembled moved through to the hall for drinks beneath the tree before going back to their rooms to bathe and change once more (up to five changes a day can be required on some occasions). As they sipped their pre-bath martinis – mixed to the servants' special formula – there was one question on everyone's lips: ‘Where's Harry?' When someone joked: ‘He's confined to barracks at Windsor, been a naughty boy', the Queen smiled. Only she, her husband and her eldest son were in on the secret.

While the Queen and her guests were beginning their festive celebrations, 2nd Lieutenant Wales was in fact more than 3,500 miles away in southern Helmand, the most dangerous province in war-torn Afghanistan, looking around the tiny room allocated to him in FOB (Forward Operating Base) Delhi; the ruins of a former madrasa, a school of Islamic theology once occupied by the Taliban. Even as Her Majesty's guests were plumping up the pillows on the
four-poster
beds in the eighteenth-century mansion's opulent
suites, Harry – the first senior royal to fight on a battlefield since Queen Victoria's grandson Prince Maurice in the First World War – was checking out the blanket-covered cot he would sleep in for the next several nights.

For the formal Christmas Eve dinner at Sandringham – heralded (as are all the meals) by the sound of a gong at precisely 8 p.m. – evening dress is obligatory: black tie for the men, gowns and jewels for the ladies. In Helmand there was no such adornment for Harry: he wore full ‘battle rattle', including body armour, over his camouflage fatigues, and helmet, and he carried his SA80A2 rifle and 9mm pistol together with the necessary ammunition at all times. Around his neck he wore a band to which were attached his ID tags and a small quantity of morphine in case of injury. While the royals looked out on the magnificent gardens beneath the windows of the Sovereign's palace-away-from-home, the Queen's grandson surveyed the rock-strewn desert which surrounded his quarters. A splash of orange here and there was the only evidence that this was the poppy breadbasket of the region but he was where he wanted to be: not for him the upstairs-downstairs,
Downton Abbey
kind of existence where the have-alls are waited on hand and foot by the have-nots.

And while the only ‘enemy' the royals had to contend with was the band of photographers they referred to as the ‘Nikon Army' kept more than half a mile away by officers of the royal protection squad, Harry knew that just a few hundred yards from where he stood was the real enemy, the Taliban – and they wanted him and his like dead.

‘Within an hour of arriving here he crossed “no man's land” to meet the Gurkhas who were his men,' says Lt Colonel (then Major) Bill Connor who was there in his capacity as Lead US Advisor for the province, the man who would decide how American troops might be deployed to back up the British Army as well as Afghan soldiers. Connor was to become Harry's confidant and friend over the ensuing days and weeks.

Connor was wrong about there being no special security detail with Harry: six SAS troopers had in fact been detailed as his ‘guardian angels' but they remained in Helmand on standby. They did not shadow him as armed royal protection officers had done all his life, but they were never more than a short Chinook flight away in case an unforeseen emergency involving the Prince arose.

There were few more dangerous locations in southern Helmand than FOB Delhi, and the sparse area between the base and JTAC (Joint Tactical Air Control) Hill where Harry
was to greet his men was ‘high risk' – in view of the Taliban snipers who, from time to time, raised their heads above the trenches and made full use of the mortars and missiles they were armed with.

‘He went up there on to the hill without showing any sign of fear. I take my hat off to him,' says Connor, who at thirty-nine was sixteen years Harry's senior.

Clearly the enemy was unaware that the man being
photographed
shaking the soldiers' hands was an heir to the British throne or they would surely have stepped up their assault. Back in FOB Delhi he tucked into his army rations, enhanced with a little cooked chicken, before going over the instructions he had been given for his part in the war.

It was a cold winter's night on the Norfolk estate and the two-bar electric fires placed in each did little to heat the enormous
bedrooms where abundant blankets – but no duvets – were made available. Downstairs, however, roaring log fires kept the partying royals warm. There was no such luxury for Harry: ‘It was bitterly cold and none of us got much sleep that night, including Harry,' says Connor. Much the same could be said by the royal guests since their hostess did not retire until past midnight and no one could leave the room until she had.

The following morning, as the Queen and her party braved the forces of the Nikon Army to be rewarded by cheers from a 1,000-strong crowd of well-wishers waiting in pouring rain to greet their arrival at the Sandringham Parish Church of St Mary Magdalene, Bill Connor and Harry stepped outside for morning exercises at their desert outpost:

The royals' lunch menu was the same as it has been for many years: clear soup, lemon sole, roast Norfolk turkey and a selection of cold meats arranged on silver salvers, followed by mince pies, Christmas pudding and custard. The fare was served by an army of liveried servants, the junior members of which having been allowed to have theirs at 11 a.m. while the butlers and footmen had to wait until 4 p.m. There is no record of what the royals discussed as they feasted, but there is some knowledge of what the servants were talking about below stairs: Paul Burrell and the pantry diary. In his tell-all book
A Royal Duty,
published in 2003, the butler had written about a temper Prince Charles had apparently flown into after being confronted by Diana with details of intimate lunches at Highgrove with Camilla Parker Bowles. How did she know about them? He demanded to know if Burrell had told her. No, was the answer, but he had recorded her name – along with all of Charles's celebrity guests – in the diary he kept in his pantry on each of the many occasions Mrs Parker Bowles had been there and Diana might have read that. The Prince angrily ordered him to abandon the practice, but the damage had already been done. This was the atmosphere Harry had grown up in and he was glad to be away from it.

Just as the royals had taken their places according to the Queen's seating plan, Harry and his fellow soldiers gathered in the dusty room that served as a mess. And there they looked hungrily forward to a treat of their own: ‘A visiting brigadier had brought in a live goat for our Christmas Day meal,' recalls Bill Connor.

And just as the royals had opened their presents the previous afternoon, Harry and his new American buddy traded food from their respective MRE (meals-ready-to-eat) boxes: ‘They had beans and stuff and we had spaghetti and chicken-type things. Their chocolate was a bit ordinary but we had name brands like M&Ms so those made a good trade.'

Harry – perhaps jokingly, perhaps not – said that celebrity chef Jamie Oliver should be flown in to do for the troops what he was trying to do to improve British school meals.

After sharing their curried-goat lunch – no silver salvers here, just disposable plates – Harry and Bill had their
photograph
taken together. It was a different story at Sandringham where the royals settled down to watch the Queen's televised Christmas message at 3 p.m. as they do every year. Her Majesty
had chosen to highlight the needs of society's vulnerable – ‘It is all too easy to turn a blind eye, to pass by on the other side and leave it to experts and professionals' – the woman on the 42-inch plasma screen (one of Sandringham's few concessions to modern technology) in front of them began. Towards the end of the speech, however, she had added some words that seemed aimed towards her absent grandson: