Harry (17 page)

However, it seemed pretty obvious that he was bound
somewhere
for action when he flew to the British Army Training Unit at Suffield in Alberta, Canada, an area used for British armoured vehicles to practise operations with live
ammunition
just like the equipment his regiment were using in Iraq. The people at Clarence House were happy, Chelsy was happy. What mischief could Harry get up to in the backwaters of Canada? They hadn’t reckoned on the Calgary Cowboys bar where Harry flirted outrageously with a provocatively dressed barmaid/hostess called Cherie Cymbalisty to whom he called himself Gary and in the next breath asked her if she was wearing any underwear. Despite a necking session the 22-year-old declined his offer of a trip to the nearby barracks but – according to her – the next morning she claims he sent the following text message to the mobile phone number she
had given him: ‘What happened to you last night babe? U disappeared. We waited for you outside coz apparently u were keen to come back to party?! Loser. Guess you didn’t have the stamina, hey?!!!! We went all night and u were v missed X.’

When it was reported, Chelsy got angry: ‘her’ man was at it again. Once more their relationship was seriously strained.

It had been Harry’s idea to stage a massive concert in memory of his mother’s death some ten years earlier. On 1 July 2007 it would have been Diana’s forty-sixth birthday and the Queen had suggested a private dinner for relatives and a couple of dozen close friends at Buckingham Palace. But Harry had other ideas. He persuaded William – who normally did his best to honour his grandmother’s wishes – that a quiet palace dinner was no way to celebrate such an occasion: Wembley Stadium should be the venue and they could have not dozens but tens of thousands of people there to share the day at a big concert. In the event 63,000 turned up in person and an estimated 500 million watched it in the 140 countries it was transmitted to. The princes delivered a ‘night of energy and fun’ to remember Diana’s
joie de vivre
. The Queen watched it on TV and later told Harry he had been right to choose the public option; she was beginning to see that his forward thinking was pointing the Royal Family in a new, modern, direction. It was a direction she could never expect Charles to follow.

‘This event is about all what our mother loved in life – her music, her dancing, her charities and her family and friends,’ Harry told the massive audience. ‘She would have been the first up and out of her seat.’ Then he added mischievously: ‘When we first had the idea we forgot we would end up standing here desperately trying to think of something funny to say so we’ll leave that to the funny people … and Ricky Gervais.’

On a more serious note he addressed a special message to his Household Cavalry squadron serving in Iraq, which was listening to a live simulcast: ‘I wish I was there with you. I’m sorry I can’t be. But to all of those on operations at the moment – stay safe.’

An anticipated comeback appearance by his once
favourite
group, the Spice Girls, failed to happen. Their
non-appearance
, however, did nothing to dampen the spirits of the massive crowd who had paid £45 each for their tickets (the profits were to be divided between three charities – Sentebale, the Diana Memorial Fund and Centrepoint) for there was a vast array of entertainment to come, provided by Sir Elton John, Duran Duran, Status Quo, Sir Tom Jones, Lily Allen, P. Diddy, the Black Eyed Peas, Fergie, James Morrison, Joss Stone, Natasha Bedingfield, Andrea Bocelli, Sarah Brightman and Donny Osmond. Not forgetting Diana’s love of
dancing
there were performances by the English National Ballet, of which she was a patron, as well as a medley of musicals created by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Just two months after the fun and games of the massive
Wembley concert, Harry found a more sombre occasion to honour his mother’s memory. Needless to say the Guards Chapel at Wellington Barracks in Knightsbridge could accommodate only a tiny fraction of the number who attended the Wembley event, but 500 people packed the chapel for a special service to mark the tenth anniversary of Diana’s death. Despite the difference in numbers Harry said he felt ‘a hundred times’ more nervous walking up the aisle to the strains of ‘The Londonderry Air’, than he had facing the 63,000 crowd at Wembley cheering on Status Quo.

Because the organisers feared that ever-sensitive William might break down while addressing a congregation that included his grandmother, grandfather, father (without Camilla, whom Diana had always referred to as ‘his lady’) and the Prime Minister, it fell to Harry to make the
toughest
speech of his life and he did it with great aplomb. He spoke of Diana’s ‘unrivalled love of life, laughter, fun and folly’ and pointed out that she had been ‘our guardian, friend and protector … never once allowing her unfaltering love for us to go unspoken or undemonstrated’.

The Queen, with William at her side on the front pew, blinked when her grandson said of the woman who had been stripped of her royal title:

It was moving stuff and many gathered outside the chapel wept as Harry delivered with great dignity the most moving tribute to the late Princess anyone could remember – a far cry from the bitter eulogy Charles Spencer had proffered at his sister’s funeral.

It was at the brothers’ request that the Bishop of London made an appeal in his address for the gossips to cease their endless repetition of stories about Diana’s amorous adventures:

Sporting his regimental tie, Harry stood with his head held high as the congregation sang his choice of closing hymn, ‘I Vow to Thee, My Country’ (a favourite of Diana’s), before launching into a specially stalwart rendition of the national anthem.

Those assembled in the chapel – and they included the singing knights Elton John and Cliff Richard – had seen a new Harry emerge that day and, had they not felt it
inappropriate, they would surely have given him a standing ovation. As it was he got something even better: in a rare public display of family affection the Queen, dressed in vivid purple for the occasion, gave him a hug.

It gave him the strength for what lay ahead: the inquests into Diana’s death, an inquiry which delved into the
darkest
corners of her troubled life. The Bishop of London’s words had fallen on a number of deaf (though in many cases eminent) ears.

Harry made a pledge to himself from the outset that he simply would not read newspaper reports of the hearing into both his mother’s and Dodi’s deaths in the Paris tunnel. Just as well; the ‘evidence’ presented – much of it at the instigation of lawyers acting for Dodi’s father Mohamed Al Fayed – included the most personal details of Diana’s life and health. There was even a shocking allegation that their maternal grandmother, Frances Shand Kydd, had called her a ‘whore’ for her involvement with Muslim men, but then Mrs Shand Kydd was not a well woman at the time and those caring for her were concerned about the level of instability she displayed from time to time.

The two princes survived the inquiries, recriminations and emotional hand-wringing that surrounded the tenth
anniversary
of their mother’s death. The pair had supported each other throughout and grown extremely close during the
ensuing decade. They had also galvanised royal reputation and prestige in the eyes of an intrusive and demanding
twenty-first
century public, as well as providing a touchstone for what had, at times, been a much-beleaguered monarchy.

The morning after the July 2007 bombings in which
fifty-two
people lost their lives in central London, an extraordinary scene was witnessed by a man well known in royal circles:

I
t was the Queen who, after a conclusive meeting with General Dannatt, had given Harry the news that he was going to Afghanistan. He could not have been more pleased. After a slight period of depression following the cancellation of his Iraq deployment, this was exactly what he wanted to hear. This time the MoD had done its homework and General Dannatt was sure that the deal he had struck with the media leaders would work, that they would honour their part of the compromise deal by not writing or saying anything until he had returned safely home, provided they were allowed access to the Prince in the war zone.

Having packed his kit into his Bergen rucksack, Harry slipped out of the UK on 14 December 2007. At RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, he joined surprised comrades aboard a C-17 transport carrier aircraft for the twelve-hour flight to Afghanistan. This was the real thing so, determined to follow the instructions he had been given, he slipped out of his sleeping bag as the plane approached Kandahar and put on
his body armour and helmet in case the aircraft came under attack on landing.

After collecting his ammunition he joined special forces soldiers in a Chinook helicopter headed for what was then Forward Operating Base Dwyer in Helmand Province, the most dangerous place on earth. He had made it to the front line and he had his grandmother’s persistence to thank for it: without Her Majesty’s approval his deployment would never have happened

Even in the theatre of war he could not resist an
opportunity
to flirt and he chatted up Michelle Tompkins as she piloted a Harrier jet over snow-covered mountains. His commanding officer teased him that if he continued that line of conversation with the first woman he had come across since bidding farewell to Chelsy in London, he’d better get a room.

Talk about the opposite sex – members of which were clearly in short supply from this point on – was the favourite pastime during the limited breaks he and his fellow soldiers got. Girly magazines were passed around and one pilot focused his on-board camera to reveal a picture of a topless model taped to the outside of his aircraft, not knowing that it was an heir to the throne he was entertaining. But then, at that stage, few of the aircrews he communicated with were aware of his identity. To them he was just another voice, albeit, as one said later, ‘rather a plummy one. Although he was obviously trying to tone it down.’

‘It’s just me and him [the pilot] having good banter and
obviously when the aircraft comes in you know you’ve got them on task for three hours and yet you’re looking for just one or two [enemy individuals] digging a trench. It can get quite tiring,’ Harry told one interviewer.

Dave Baxter, with whom he formed a close friendship said, ‘He’s a really down-to-earth person. To be honest I don’t think anyone here thinks of him as third in line to the throne. You just take him at face value.’

But for all the fun and camaraderie, this was real war, a bitter war and there was danger around every corner. A number of men came close to breakdown and Harry was always the first to comfort them: ‘Think of the folks back home,’ he said to one. ‘You will see them again; focus on what a
wonderful
moment that will be and don’t forget, they’re longing to see you too.’ The same could be said of Harry’s family, who had by now all been let in on the secret the Queen, Philip and Charles had kept to themselves at Sandringham on Christmas Day. His camp frequently came under attack from mortar shells and machine-gun fire. He was under no
illusion
that mortal danger snaked around every corner as he patrolled the bombed-out streets of Garmsir turning it from
a lively community into a ghost town, with those inhabitants who had not fled constantly aware that any friendly contact with the British soldiers could bring the ultimate punishment if the Taliban spies in their midst spotted and reported it.

How he must have missed the chilled cocktails at Boujis when the daytime heat left him parched, for the bottled water specially flown in was strictly rationed and even a prince used to having just about everything he wanted had to make do with his meagre share – one bottle a day. Often the
desperate
men drank foul-tasting chlorinated water from the local supply, the Prince included. What fresh water could be spared, Harry and his men took to the locals, sharing what they could really have done with themselves. There was as much danger associated with such an action as there was generosity. Any one of those smiling Afghans could have been a suicide bomber. He was taught to watch for tell-tale signs – a man sweating profusely, wearing too many clothes in the heat, walking with leaden feet, or with something protruding from his body – all showed that he was a potential killer.

But the danger and the discomfort are what he had signed up for. Tired of the royal pampering that dominated his early life, he wanted adventure and was getting it in large measure. There were no privileges and he had to stand in line for his weekly thirty minutes’ use of a satellite phone to call home. This was the Harry Wales he had longed to be, not the ‘spoiled toff’ who got waited on hand and foot at home. His mother had said too that she longed for ‘normality’ but would she ever have accepted it to such an extreme? Perhaps serving
as a nurse in a field hospital instead of visiting in a smart suit with a Gucci handbag tucked under her arm? No, Harry was his own man and no one – not even desperate Diana – had gone this far to secure the sanity that normality provides. Royals, as Prince Andrew had once said to him, could never be normal: ‘We live in a different world.’ Using the ‘
thunder-boxes
’ – metal containers to collect bodily waste which when dried out was burned with kerosene to provide some warmth when temperatures plunged at night to ten degrees below freezing – Harry was proving his uncle wrong.

There were times when the lives of his men as well as his own were in grave danger and, as such, it was imperative that Harry kept his wits about him at all times. When the Taliban launched one particularly relentless attack on FOB Delhi, he was ready; having monitored their movements with
sophisticated
surveillance equipment for the previous forty-eight hours he had the foresight to realise that their movements from bunker to bunker demonstrated preparation for a major attack on his base. He called in an American F-15E fighter plane whose pilot he had become familiar with during
previous
attacks on the garrison. First he despatched the aircraft to a point where its engines could not be heard by the enemy, who would therefore think they were safe to resume their attack. Alas, they had not allowed for Harry’s careful planning and determined concentration. As they emerged from cover to complete their attack, the Taliban fighters were surprised by the emergence of the lethal American jet Harry had kept waiting in the wings. His action saved many lives and wiped
out a number of increasingly skilled enemy fighters. It was not until some time later that Captain Ben Donberg learned the identity of the man who had called him in to carry out such a successful sortie, but the compliments he heaped on the caller were the same as he would have lavished on any soldier who had carried out his work with such proficiency.

Harry repeated military buddy Bill Connor’s sentiments when he said in a subsequent interview:

Whatever he wanted to call it, the Prince was in mortal danger every day of his life during his spell in Afghanistan. He had two very narrow escapes: once when a drone aircraft spotted a Taliban landmine his convoy was only metres away from striking and on another occasion when the Taliban managed to land a 107mm Chinese-made rocket fifty metres from the spot where he had dug in following a warning only seconds before it exploded. But if he was ever scared, he never showed it. In all his ten weeks in combat he never displayed anger until he was eventually given the information that his recall
was due to a leak by the Australian women’s magazine and a crazy blogger who had let the world know of his presence – and that included the Taliban, who were now certain to do all they could to catch and kill him. ‘He said you were a bitch and that Drudge was a bastard,’ wrote one sat next to him on the homeward flight to the magazine editor. He never got a reply.

General Dannatt had called the Queen and told her, ‘It’s time to pull him out.’ She agreed: ‘Please bring him home safely.’ Within minutes the order had been conveyed to Helmand.

Harry had his suspicions about the recall when he heard of the decision by chance as he monitored radio
conversations
that did not mention him by name but seemed to have been about him. His fears were confirmed when the six SAS guardian angels arrived from Helmand in the Chinook that had been kept on standby for just such an emergency. ‘Sir’, as he was called (such a welcome change from ‘Your Royal Highness’) was given less than an hour to pack his possessions and hand over his high-tech equipment to another JTAC. At that point still unaware of the reason for his recall, he was flown to the coalition airbase on the outskirts of Kandahar and transferred to an RAF TriStar passenger jet for the journey back to RAF Brize Norton where it had all started just ten weeks earlier. He was not given the details until the aircraft was safely out of Afghan airspace and even then his thoughts were with two seriously injured soldiers lying close to him, both sedated. ‘Those are the heroes, not me,’ he said. ‘The ones who have lost limbs and will never be able to live
a normal life again.’ After a brief stop at Birmingham airport to take the badly injured to Selly Oak military hospital, the TriStar touched down at Brize Norton. There were no smiles on their faces when Charles and William welcomed him home. ‘Got your Christmas card the other day,’ he said to his father. Charles merely nodded. Harry was sullen as he stepped into the car for the short journey home to Highgrove, where he stayed in the bath for more than an hour before feeling able to interact with them.

It was from Highgrove that he telephoned Chelsy and told her he was on his way to Africa; would she be there for him? Would she! And then he was back in the air again, this time headed for Botswana. There, he and Chelsy picked up a rickety houseboat which took them along the Okavango Delta and the now happy pair set off into the sunset,
cooking
their own meals as they went rather than revert to the kind of royal service he at least was used to. The romance was back on; for a few days Helmand was a place in the past. They could not have been in a better setting: the area Chelsy had chosen spans more than 10,000 square miles of forests, flood plains and magical deserted islands. No Taliban in sight. It was a romance the people at the palace were beginning to take seriously: this was a woman who could comfort a
much-depressed
and angry prince. It had not escaped their attention that he was calling her ‘wifey’ and she him ‘hubby’.

Back home the third in line to the throne (at the time of writing) had been pilloried as a playboy who brawled with photographers after over-indulging in nightclubs and who chose to display himself in a Nazi uniform at a costume party, but he had returned from the Afghanistan front line as a hero, although he hated the description.
WHEN HARRY MET TALI
trumpeted the
Daily Star
, one of the tabloids that had made the most they could out of any previous
misdemeanours
. Like the men who served with him, he had risked his life in head-on clashes with the enemy; his behaviour had been faultless throughout and the British media were united in their praise. Now it was time to live up to the title he had been born with and he began to carry out official engagements, winning hearts in the process just as his mother had done.

Back from Africa, and after taking Chelsy to his cousin Peter Phillips’s wedding to Autumn Kelly – where she met the Queen for the first time – a mellowed prince travelled to Wales for a full day of official engagements. It was not the kind of work he wanted to do and he would certainly have preferred to be back with his regiment in Afghanistan, but no one would have guessed it from his friendly demeanour. For his first port of call he chose Cathays High School in Cardiff, which had raised thousands of pounds to help buy equipment and a herd of cows at £500 each to provide milk for the pupils at Molapo High School in Lesotho.