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What about…becoming a helicopter pilot?

Wow. I leaned back. Hadn’t ever considered that. Maybe because Willy
and my father—and Grandpa and Uncle Andrew—were pilots. I was always keen on following my own line, doing my own thing, but General Dannatt said this would be the best way. The only way. I’d be safer, so to speak, above the fray, among the clouds. So would everyone else serving with me. Even if the press were to find out I’d gone back to Afghanistan, even if they did something stupid again—even
when
they did something stupid again—so what? The Taliban might know where I was, but good luck to them tracking me in the air.

How long until I can qualify as a pilot, General?

About two years.

I shook my head.
Too long, sir.

He shrugged.
It takes what it takes. And for good reason.

There was a great deal of schoolwork involved, he explained.

Bloody hell. At every turn, life was determined to drag me back into a classroom.

I thanked him, told him I’d think about it.

But I spent that summer
of 2008 not thinking about it.

I didn’t think much about anything, besides the three wounded soldiers who’d been with me on the plane home. I wanted other people to think about them too, and talk about them. Not enough people were thinking and talking about British soldiers coming back from the battlefield.

With every free minute I was trying to work out a way I could change that.

In the meantime, the Palace was keeping me busy. I was sent to America, my first official working trip there. (I’d been to Colorado once, white-water rafting, and touring Disney World with Mummy.) JLP was involved in drafting the itinerary, and he knew exactly the kinds of things I wanted to do. I wanted to visit wounded soldiers, and I wanted to lay a wreath at the site of the World Trade Center. And I wanted to meet the families of those who’d died on September 11, 2001. He made it all happen.

I remember little else of that trip besides those moments. I look back and read stories of the hullabaloo, everywhere I went, the giddy discussions of my mother, much of it due to her love of America and her historic visits there, but what I remember most is sitting with wounded soldiers, visiting military gravesites, talking to families swamped in grief.

I held their hands, I nodded and told them:
I know
. I think we all made each other feel better. Grief is a thing best shared.

I returned to Britain firmer in my belief that more needed to be done for everyone affected by the war on terror. I pushed myself hard—too hard. I was burned out, and didn’t know it, and many mornings I woke feeling weak with fatigue. But I didn’t see how I could slow down, because so many were asking for help. So many were suffering.

Around this time I learned about a new British organization: Help for Heroes. I loved what they were doing, the awareness they were bringing to the plight of soldiers. Willy and I reached out to them.
What can we do?

There is something, said the founders, parents of a British soldier.
Would you wear our wristband?

Of course! We wore one at a football game, with Kate, and the effect was electrifying. Demand for the wristband skyrocketed, donations began rolling in. It was the start of a long, meaningful relationship. More, it was a visceral reminder of the power of our platform.

Still, I did most of my work behind the scenes. I spent many days at Selly Oak Hospital, and Headley Court, chatting with soldiers, listening to their stories, trying to give them a moment of peace or a laugh. I never alerted the press and only let the Palace do so once, I think. I didn’t want a reporter within a mile of those encounters, which might look casual on the surface, but were in reality searingly intimate.

You were in Helmand Province too?

Oh, yes.

Lose any guys out there?

Yeah.

Anything I can do?

You’re doing it, mate.

I stood by the bedsides of men and women in a terrible state, and often with their families. One young lad was wrapped in bandages, head to foot, in an induced coma. His mum and dad were there, and they told me they’d been keeping a diary about his recovery; they asked me to read it. I did. Then, with their permission, I wrote something in it for him to read when he woke. Afterwards, we all hugged, and when we said goodbye it felt like family.

Finally, I went to a physical rehab center for an official engagement and met with one of the soldiers from the flight home. Ben. He told me how the IED had taken off his left arm and right leg. Boiling hot day, he said. He was running, heard a blast, then felt himself flying twenty feet into the air.

He remembered
seeing
his leg leaving his body.

He told me this with a faint, brave smile.

The day before my visit he’d received his new prosthetic leg. I glanced down.
Very sleek, mate. Looks quite strong!
We’ll soon see, he said. His rehab regime called for him to go up and down a climbing wall that day.

I hung around, watched.

He settled into a harness, grabbed a rope, shimmied up the wall. He gave a rousing whoop and cheer at the top, then a wave, then climbed back down.

I was astounded. I’d never been so proud—to be British, to be a soldier, to be his brother in arms. I told him so. I told him I wanted to buy him a beer for getting to the top of that wall. No, no, a crate of beer.

He laughed.
Wouldn’t say no to that, mate!

He said something about wanting to run a marathon.

I said if he ever did, when he did, he’d find me waiting at the finish line.

Towards the end of
that summer I went to Botswana, met up with Teej and Mike. They’d recently done masterwork on the David Attenborough series
Planet Earth
, and a few other BBC films, and now they were shooting an important film about elephants. Several herds, stressed by habitat encroachment and drought, were stampeding into Namibia in search of food, running straight into the arms of poachers—hundreds, armed with AK-47s. Teej and Mike hoped their film might shine a light on this rolling massacre.

I asked if I could help. They didn’t hesitate.
Course, Spike.

In fact, they offered to hire me as a credited, though unpaid, cameraman.

From Day One they talked about how
different
I seemed. Not that I wasn’t always a hard worker, but clearly I’d learned from the Army how to take direction. They never had to tell me anything twice.

Many times during that shoot we’d be riding around the bush in their flatbed truck and I’d gaze off and think: How bizarre. My whole life I’ve despised photographers, because they specialize in stealing your freedom, and now I’m a working photographer, fighting to preserve the freedom of these majestic animals. And feeling freer in the process.

More ironic, I was filming veterinarians as they put tracking devices on the animals. (The devices would help researchers better understand the herd’s
migration patterns.) Until now, I didn’t have the happiest associations with tracking devices.

One day we filmed a vet dart a big bull elephant, then wrap a tracking collar around his neck. But the dart only nicked the elephant’s tough skin, so he was able to gather himself and charge away.

Mike yelled:
Grab the camera, Spike! Run!

The elephant was tearing through thick bush, mostly along a sandy path, though sometimes there was no path. The vet and I tried to stay in his footprints. I couldn’t believe the animal’s speed. He went eight kilometers before slowing, then stopping. I kept my distance, and when the vet caught up, I watched him put another dart into the elephant. Finally the big fella went down.

Moments later Mike came roaring up in his truck.
Good job, Spike!

I was panting, hands on my knees, bathed in sweat.

Mike looked down in horror.
Spike.
Where are your shoes?

Oh. Yeah. Left them on the truck. Didn’t think there was time to grab them.

You ran eight kilometers…through the bush…in no shoes?

I laughed.
You told me to run. Like you said, the Army taught me how to take direction.

Right at the turn of
the new year, 2009, a video went viral.

Me, as a cadet, three years earlier, sitting with other cadets.

At an airport. Cyprus, perhaps? Or else maybe waiting to fly to Cyprus?

The video was shot by me. Killing time before our flight, messing around, I panned the group, gave a running commentary on each lad, and when I came to my fellow cadet and good friend Ahmed Raza Kahn, a Pakistani, I said:
Ah, our little Paki friend…

I didn’t know that Paki was a slur. Growing up, I’d heard many people use that word and never saw anyone flinch or cringe, never suspected them of being racist. Neither did I know anything about unconscious bias. I was twenty-one, awash in isolation and privilege, and if I thought anything about this word at all, I thought it was like Aussie. Harmless.

I’d sent the footage to a fellow cadet, who was making an end-of-year video. Since then, it had circulated, flitted from computer to computer, and ultimately ended up in the hands of someone who sold it to the
News of the World
.

Heated condemnations began rolling in.

I’d learned nothing, people said.

I’d not matured one bit after the Nazi debacle, people said.

Prince Harry is worse than a thicko, they said, worse than a party boy—he’s a racist.

The Tory leader denounced me. A cabinet minister went on TV to flog me. Ahmed’s uncle condemned me to the BBC.

I was sitting in Highgrove, watching this furor rain down, barely able to process it.

My father’s office issued an apology on my behalf. I wanted to issue one as well, but courtiers advised against it.

Not the best strategy, sir.

To hell with strategy
. I didn’t care about strategy. I cared about people not thinking I was a racist. I cared about
not being
a racist.

Above all, I cared about Ahmed. I connected with him directly, apologized. He said he knew I wasn’t a racist. No big deal.

But it was. And his forgiveness, his easy grace, only made me feel worse.

As that controversy continued
to spread, I shipped off to RAF Barkston Heath. Strange time to begin flight training, to begin any kind of training. My congenitally weak powers of concentration were never weaker. But maybe, I told myself, it’s also the best time. I wanted to hide from humanity, flee the planet, and since a rocket wasn’t available, maybe an aeroplane would do.

Before I could climb into any aircraft, however, the Army would need to make sure I had the right stuff. For several weeks they poked my body, probed my mind.

Drug-free, they concluded. They seemed surprised.

Also, videos to the contrary notwithstanding, not a total thicko.

So…proceed.

My first aircraft would be a Firefly, they said. Bright yellow, fixed wing, single prop.

Simple machine, according to my first flight instructor, Sergeant Major Booley.

I got in and thought: Really? Didn’t look simple to me.

I turned to Booley, studied him. He wasn’t simple either. Short, solid, tough, he’d fought in Iraq and the Balkans and should’ve been a hard case, given all he’d seen and been through, but in fact he seemed to suffer no ill-effects from his tours of combat. On the contrary, he was all gentleness.

He needed to be. With so much on my mind, I entered our sessions wildly distracted, and it showed. I kept expecting Booley to lose patience, to begin shouting at me, but he never did. In fact, after one session, he invited me for a motorbike ride in the country.
Let’s go and clear our heads, Lieutenant Wales.

It worked. Like a charm. And the motorbike, a gorgeous Triumph 675, was a timely reminder of what I was after in these flight lessons. Speed and power.

And freedom.

Then we discovered we weren’t free: the press had followed us the whole way and papped us outside Booley’s house.

After a period of acclimatizing to the Firefly’s cockpit, becoming familiar with the control panel, we finally took her up. On one of our first flights together, with no warning, Booley threw the aircraft into a stall. I felt the left wing dip, a sickening feeling of disorder, of entropy, and then, after several seconds that felt like decades, he recovered the aircraft and leveled the wings.

I stared at him.
What in the absolute—?

Was this an aborted suicide attempt?

No, he said gently. This was the next stage in my training. Countless things can go wrong in the air, he explained, and he needed to show me what to do—but also how to do it.

Stay. Cool.

Our next flight, he pulled the same stunt. But this time he didn’t recover the aircraft. As we went spinning and pirouetting towards Earth he said:
It’s time.

For what?

For YOU to…DO IT.

He looked at the controls. I grabbed them, stuck the boot in, regained the aircraft in what felt like the nick of time.

I looked at Booley, waited for congratulations.

Nothing. Barely any reaction at all.

Over time Booley would do this again and again, cut the power, put us into freefall. As the creaking metal and roaring white noise of the stilled engine became deafening he’d turn calmly to his left:
It’s time.

Time?

You have control.

I have control.

After I restored the power, after we returned to base safely, there was never any fanfare. Not even much chatter. No medals in Booley’s cockpit for simply doing your job.

At last, one clear morning, after a routine handful of circuits over the airfield, we landed softly and Booley jumped out as if the Firefly were on fire.

What’s the matter?

It’s time, Lieutenant Wales.