Authors: Chris Hutchins
Harry (16 page)
To add to his joy Clarence House announced in effect that
Cornet Wales was on his way up in the military world: he was to serve in an armoured reconnaissance unit as part of his training to become a troop commander. He would be in charge of eleven men and four tanks and the likelihood was that he would get his wish to serve in a combat zone –
probably
Iraq or Afghanistan. Harry Wales was going to war.
It was not, however, that simple. Even as he continued his post-Sandhurst training there were rumours that his
promised
posting to Iraq would not materialise. The army denied them and Harry apparently insisted – though this has not been confirmed – that he would quit his beloved army if his regiment was sent without him. There were protests from members of the public too – why had he been trained at great expense for a job he might never be allowed to carry out? It gave General Sir Richard Dannatt, Chief of the General Staff, sleepless nights but he finally made up his mind: on 21 February 2007 the Ministry of Defence made it clear that Harry’s wish was to come true. The Ministry’s
announcement
read:
We can confirm today that Prince Harry will deploy to Iraq later this year in command of a troop from A Squadron of the Household Cavalry Regiment. While in Iraq Cornet Wales will carry out a normal troop commander’s role involving leading a troop of twelve men in four Scimitar armoured reconnaissance vehicles, each with a crew of three. The decision to deploy him has been a military one. The royal household has been consulted throughout.
Harry’s godfather Gerald Ward said he was disappointed by the announcement: ‘I fear for anyone’s life in that situation. It is very naïve of the Ministry of Defence to spell out the work he might do and the type of vehicles he may drive.’ He went on to venture that the good relations the Prince of Wales enjoyed with Muslims across the world would serve Harry in good stead.
The news was, however, received with joy by Harry … and bitter glee by the enemy. Abu Zaid, commander of the Malik Ibn Al Ashtar Brigade declared: ‘We are awaiting the arrival of the young, handsome, spoiled Prince with bated breath. He will return to his grandmother but without ears.’ He had, he said, spies inside the British bases who would notify insurgents whenever and wherever the Prince arrived. No wonder Harry told those bidding him farewell at a London nightclub that he was ‘shitting himself’. The regiment he had chosen to join specialised in the highly dangerous operation of scouting out enemy-held terrain in light armour and was particularly exposed to ambushes and roadside bombs.
The Army High Command had to think again, however. General Dannatt was forced to announce on 16 May that he had changed his mind. The chilling threats, along with
intelligence
that a crackshot enemy sniper, already responsible for killing six British soldiers, had already been assigned the job of assassinating the Prince, made the risks altogether too great. The Prince would not be going to Iraq, where his
one-time
hero James Hewitt had served, after all.
Harry was devastated, although in response to General
Dannatt’s declaration that he had proved himself to be an officer of determination and undoubted talent, he made it known that he fully understood and accepted the reasons for the General’s about-turn: his presence on the battlefield would put the lives of those around him at even greater risk. He did his best to explain that when he was allowed a brief meeting with other members of his regiment as they prepared to depart for Iraq. For their part his men said they would happily accept the increased risk to themselves if they could have him as their troop leader.
‘That seemed to cheer him up but privately he was in pieces, not helped by those critics who said he shouldn’t have joined the army in the first place if it was only to enhance the Windsors’ glory,’ says a well-informed source. ‘He went out and got blotto.’ Prince Philip joined the chorus of disapproval by saying that Harry should never have been allowed to join the army in the first place: the navy would have provided a ‘far more secure environment’. General Dannatt responded by blaming the media for its criticism of what it had described as a ‘cock-up’, pointing out that during his long army service, the Duke of Kent had not been allowed to go to Northern Ireland during the troubles there since he, as the Queen’s cousin, would have been an obvious target for the IRA.
Harry showed that he was still contemplating leaving the army if it meant sitting on his ‘arse back home’. ‘I feel,’ he said ‘that if I’m going to cause this much chaos to a lot of people, then I should bow out, and not just for my own sake, for everyone’s sake.’ It was at this point that he was privately
assured he would see active service but next time there would be no publicity ahead of his deployment. The MoD
gathered
the media’s most senior executives – owners as well as editors – to get them to agree to a complete news blackout when the time came for Harry to go to war. Although one or two argued that this amounted to press censorship the majority persuaded them to agree to what amounted to a demand rather than a request although it fell short of the kind of D-Notice issued during Prince Andrew’s service in the Falklands War.
Harry, his deployment to Iraq on hold indefinitely, was obliged to join his brother in a holding unit of the Household Cavalry while William was training to fly helicopters. To distract himself from the bitter disappointment, he had to find other things to concentrate his active mind on. There were, for example, royal matters to attend to.
As the tenth anniversary of Diana’s death approached, Harry learned that his press office had been inundated with requests for him to bare all to the media. So in April 2007 he persuaded William that they should accept one of the many invitations Clarence House had received for both princes to be interviewed on television principally about their mother. They chose the American network NBC and the fortunate interviewer was one Matt Lauer who travelled to London to perform his privileged task in the princes’ familiar
surroundings
, Clarence House. Lauer began by reminding them that since one of Diana’s main concerns was that they be able to live as normal lives as possible, would she be happy with the result
ten years later? While William hesitated over his response, Harry dived in: ‘I think she’d be happy in the way that we’re going about it but slightly unhappy about the way other people were going about it.’ And in response to a remark Prince Andrew had once made to them – ‘Look, you’re not normal so stop trying to be normal. You’ve got certain
responsibilities
.’ Harry looked somewhat bemused as William made his response: ‘Obviously we know we have certain
responsibilities
. But within our private lives and within certain other parts of our lives we want to be as normal as possible. And yes, it’s hard because to a certain respect we never will be normal.’
Lauer, clearly unaware of how close the two of them are, and always have been, probed Harry about their relationship with each other.
You can’t ask [us] that because I’m his brother so I see a different side of him… He enjoys himself more than people think… But as long as we want to be fools we can… You know he works very hard. He’s definitely the more intelligent one of the two of us.
William smiled and said of his brother, ‘Oh, he’s a wild thing all right.’
Harry was back in serious mood when he said how slowly the ten years had passed for him:
It’s weird because when she passed away there was never that time, there was never that sort of lull. There was never that
sort of peace and quiet for any of us due to the fact that her face was always spattered over the papers the whole time. Over the past ten years I personally feel she has been … she’s always there. She’s always been a constant reminder to both of us and everybody else. And therefore I think when you’re being reminded about it, it does take a lot longer and it’s a bit slower… You know when people think about [her], they think about her death. They think, you know, how wrong it was. They think whatever happened. I don’t know, for me personally, what happened, you know, that night. Whatever happened in that tunnel, no one will ever know. I’m sure people will always think about it the whole time. I’ve never stopped wondering… There’s a lot of people wondering, I’ll never stop … I can’t ever stop [the public fascination] ever ending. I think there may be certain sort of times when there’s nothing to write about or when they’re working towards something new. But I think people will always have a fascination about her… You know, it still upsets me now, the fact that we didn’t have as much of a chance as other children to spend time with her.
Among the many nicknames Diana gave them was Wombat for William and Ginger for Harry, which the Queen regarded as a little unfair. As he grew older Harry’s hair turned to the sandy colour it is now, and no one could call him ginger these days. Harry makes the point that his mother
wasn’t always herself in front of the cameras. She was more natural behind the scenes when there was no one else there
and she could be herself. I don’t know whether it’s the right thing to say, but she was quite good at acting. She wasn’t acting as though she was trying to be someone different. But very much trying to appear as normal as she could in front of the cameras which she hated so much.
They said they knew when she had been placed under
pressure
or chased down the street by the mood she was in when she came home to them. How upset she was when she was criticised about her body – especially when it was insinuated that she had cellulite: ‘For any woman it’s outrageous that these people sit behind their desks and make such comments … there were many times when we had to cheer her up and tell her that she was the best thing ever.’
‘After our mother’s death,’ said Harry,
there was so much of us being in the public eye and then seeing stuff on TV and in the papers saying ‘Oh, they show no emotion’, that sort of stuff. But that’s our public side. If we don’t feel comfortable crying our eyes out in front of
thousands
of people, then that’s our problem. You know, we’ve got each other to talk to… We are both very grateful that each of us has the other’s shoulder to cry on when required.
Of the negative publicity he had received over incidents like smoking marijuana in his Eton days, drinking and brawling with photographers, Harry said people generally seemed pleasantly surprised when they met him and said, ‘Oh, you’re
so not what I thought you were. They believed what they’d read … [what’s written] is just poisonous.’
And when Lauer compared their fame to that of a pop star or a sporting celebrity, Harry delivered a surprising response, pointing out the difference between them and people who strive for fame: ‘If you’re born into it as we were, I think it’s normal to feel as though you don’t really want it [whereas] they choose it or they’re just so naturally talented at a sport and they’ve got to deal with it like David Beckham,’ at which point William – known to be less of a Beckham fan than his brother – interrupted, ‘But he likes selling himself, so he’s fine with it.’
Both princes agreed they were very guarded about people they chose to befriend, that they didn’t want sycophantic people around them. However, Harry was quick to point out: ‘But at the same time you’ve got to understand that it’s just as difficult for our friends as it is for us… There’s a massive element of trust. Our friends have to put up with a lot when it comes to us.’
When it came to his relationship with Chelsy Davy and their recent holiday together in the Caribbean, Harry avoided mentioning her by name in his reply but admitted his unwanted fame made relationships difficult: ‘You always find yourself hiding somewhere and doing something that you don’t really want to be doing. Why? Because you just don’t want to get photographed doing [what you’d like to be doing] because of what will be written about it.’
Perhaps there was a suggestion of his intention of eventually
settling down with her when he answered a question from Lauer about what he would do and where he would be if he wasn’t a prince but a plain ordinary citizen. Lauer got the same response as a number of Harry’s friends had given me when I put the same question to them about Harry: ‘I’d
probably
live in Africa. I’d like to spend all my time out there. As a job I’d probably be a safari guide… If I became normal tomorrow, then I’d help Lesotho more.’ But, he said with what sounded like just a tinge of regret, ‘I feel abnormal.’ (A Palace source attempted to qualify that by saying ‘Yes, he loves Africa and I’m sure that given the chance to live and work there he would have taken it, but he’s very conscious of the fact that he has a royal role which requires him to live in England.’)
In what seemed like a veiled reference to James Hewitt, Paul Burrell and one or two others of their ilk, William declared: ‘Harry and I are both quite upset about it, that our mother’s trust has been betrayed and that even now she’s still being exploited. There’s always people out there who want to make money. And that’s their certain choice and method to do it this way.’
The time was fast approaching for decisions to be made – both by the MoD and by Harry – about where his military options lay. Suggestions by some minions that he be sent to Bosnia or ‘somewhere in Africa’ as part of a United Nations peacekeeping force were dismissed by Harry as cop-outs. He wanted to be on the front line of a war zone or he would find employment elsewhere. ‘He could make a fortune as a
mercenary,’ someone declared at a meeting chaired by General Dannatt. Nobody laughed. This was a now-or-never situation. Having reached his agreement with the media bosses that in no way would the enemy be alerted, it was decided that he would serve in a conflict zone – Afghanistan – but in a new capacity: he would be retrained as a battlefield air controller. But no one could know other than the couple of dozen media executives sworn to secrecy in return for a certain amount of access to Harry, though nothing was to be published or televised until he had returned from his tour of duty. ‘You could be risking his life if this got out,’ they were warned. For the first, but not the last time, he was referred to as a ‘bullet magnet’.
