Spare

by Prince Harry

I looked at Willy, really looked at him, maybe for the first time since we were boys. I took it all in: his familiar scowl, which had always been his default in dealings with me; his alarming baldness, more advanced than my own; his famous resemblance to Mummy, which was fading with time. With age. In some ways he was my mirror, in some ways he was my opposite. My beloved brother, my arch nemesis, how had that happened?

Born September 15, 1984, I was christened Henry Charles Albert David of Wales.

Her father, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, was said to be a sadist, sexually aroused by the sight of soldiers being horsewhipped, and her dear husband, Albert, died before her eyes. Also, during her long, lonely reign, she was shot at eight times, on eight separate occasions, by seven different subjects. Not one bullet hit the mark. Nothing could bring Victoria down.

I was twenty the first time I heard the story of what Pa allegedly said to Mummy the day of my birth: Wonderful! Now you’ve given me an Heir and a Spare – my work is done.

People blamed him for the divorce and thus for all that followed. His approval rating around the world was single digits. In Fiji, to pick just one example, a national holiday in his honour had been rescinded.

Though a source of pride for many Britons, Rorke’s Drift was the outgrowth of imperialism, colonialism, nationalism – in short, theft.

Pa and William could never be on the same flight together, because there must be no chance of the first and second in line to the throne being wiped out. But no one gave a damn whom I travelled with; the Spare could always be spared. I knew this, knew my place, so why go out of my way to study it? Why memorize the names of past spares? What was the sense in that?

Who knows if I’m really the Prince of Wales? Who knows if I’m even your real father? Maybe your real father is in Broadmoor, darling boy!

Now, with Mummy missing, the maths swung hard in Pa’s favour. He was free to see the Other Woman, openly, as often as he liked. But seeing wasn’t sufficient. Pa wanted to be public about it. He wanted to be above-board. And the first step towards that aim was to bring “the boys” into the fold.

We thought he should be happy. Yes, Camilla had played a pivotal role in the unravelling of our parents’ marriage, and yes, that meant she’d played a role in our mother’s disappearance, but we understood that she’d been trapped like everyone else in the riptide of events. We didn’t blame her, and in fact we’d gladly forgive her if she could make Pa happy. We could see that, like us, he wasn’t. We recognized the vacant looks, the empty sighs, the frustration always visible on his face. We couldn’t be absolutely sure, because Pa didn’t talk about his feelings, but we’d pieced together, through the years, a fairly accurate portrait of him, based on little things he’d let slip.

Willy and I agreed that Pa deserved better. Apologies to Teddy, Pa deserved a proper companion. That was why, when asked, Willy and I promised Pa that we’d welcome Camilla into the family. The only thing we asked in return was that he not marry her. You don’t need to remarry, we pleaded. A wedding would cause controversy. It would incite the press. It would make the whole country, the whole world, talk about Mummy, compare Mummy and Camilla, and nobody wanted that. Least of all Camilla.

Now this same woman whom Mummy feared as her possible replacement was her actual replacement – how dreadful for Mummy. Every hug or head pat from Tiggy, therefore, must’ve unleashed some twinge of guilt, some throb of disloyalty, and yet I don’t remember that. I remember only heart-racing joy to have Tiggy next to me, telling me to buckle my seatbelt.

Distance was right, distance was safe, distance was survival. Distance was an essential bit of being royal, no less than standing on the balcony, waving to the crowds outside Buckingham Palace, your family all around you.

my face dried, as my stomach settled, I felt swelling pride. I’d been good to that stag, as I’d been taught. One shot, clean through the heart. Besides being painless, the instant kill had preserved the meat. Had I merely wounded him, or let him get a glimpse of us, his heart would’ve raced, his blood would’ve filled with adrenaline, his steaks and fillets would’ve been inedible. This blood on my face contained no adrenaline, a credit to my marksmanship.

The whole family gathered to open gifts on Christmas Eve, as always, a German tradition that survived the anglicizing of the family surname from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor.

On the bright side, I’d played the game well. After I’d called the journalist’s bluff, he went silent. As suspected, he had no photo, and when his con game didn’t work, he slithered off. (Or not quite. He slithered into Clarence House, and became very good friends with Camilla and Pa.) I was ashamed for lying.

An art teacher came forward with evidence of cheating, which turned out not to be evidence of cheating. It turned out to be nothing at all, and I was later cleared by the exam board. But the damage was done. The accusation stuck. Brokenhearted, I wanted to release a statement, hold a press conference, tell the world: I did the work! I didn’t cheat! The Palace wouldn’t let me. In this, as in most things, the Palace stuck fast to the family motto: Never complain, never explain. Especially if the complainer was an eighteen-year-old boy.

Pa announced that he’d decided to marry. He’d asked Granny’s permission, and she’d granted it. Reluctantly, it was reported. Despite Willy and me urging him not to, Pa was going ahead. We pumped his hand, wished him well. No hard feelings.

More than a birthday party, it was a fancy-dress party, with a cringy theme. Natives and colonials. Guests were required to dress accordingly.

With time running out I narrowed my options to two. A British pilot’s uniform. And a sand-coloured Nazi uniform. With a swastika armband. And a flat cap. I phoned Willy and Kate, asked what they thought. Nazi uniform, they said. I rented it, plus a silly moustache, and went back to the house. I tried it all on. They both howled. Worse than Willy’s leotard outfit! Way more ridiculous!

Someone, however, snapped photos. Days later this someone saw a chance to make some cash, or some trouble, and sought out a reporter. How much for snaps from a recent party attended by young royals? The crown jewel of the photos was thought to be Willy in his leotard.

Those men who’d chased her … they’d never stopped shooting her while she lay between the seats, unconscious, or semiconscious, and in their frenzy they’d sometimes accidentally photographed each other. Not one of them was checking on her, offering her help, not even comforting her. They were just shooting, shooting, shooting.

When the whistles blew, when the drill was “over”, some guys couldn’t turn it off. They kept stabbing and stabbing their dummies. A quick glimpse into the dark side of human nature. Then we all laughed and pretended we hadn’t seen what we’d just seen. Week twelve – or maybe thirteen? – was guns and grenades. I was a good shot. I’d been shooting rabbits and pigeons and squirrels with a .22 since I was twelve. But now I got better. So much better.

Mr Wales, you’ve got one last push. You’ve literally got six or eight miles left, that’s all. I know, I know, your feet are shit, but I suggest you don’t quit. I know you can do this. You know you can do this. Push on. You’ll never forgive yourself if you don’t.

But standing before 65,000 people, and another 500 million watching live in 140 countries, we were paralysed. Maybe that was the reason we didn’t actually say anything about her? I look at the video now and it’s striking. Here was a moment, maybe the moment, for us to describe her, to dig down deep and find the words to remind the world of her sterling qualities, her once-a-millennium magic – her disappearance. But we didn’t. I’m not suggesting a full-blown homage was in order, but maybe some small personal tribute? We offered no such thing. It was still too much, too raw. The only thing I said that was real, that came from my heart, was a shout-out to my team. I’d also like to take this opportunity to say hi to all the guys in A Squadron, Household Cavalry, who are serving out in Iraq at the moment! I wish I was there with you. I’m sorry I can’t be! But to you and everybody else on operations at the moment, we’d both like to say: Stay safe!

But along with the importance of work, he also believed in the magic of flight. He was a helicopter pilot, after all, so he particularly loved seeing me steer these jets over the marshy flats at ungodly speeds.

Even if the man had been drinking, even if he was shit-faced, he wouldn’t have had any trouble navigating that short tunnel. Unless paps had chased and blinded him. Why were those paps not more roundly blamed? Why were they not in gaol? Who sent them? And why were they not in gaol? Why indeed – unless corruption and cover-ups were the order of the day?

Shortly before my arrival an FAC got one number wrong when reading out the geo co-ordinates to an American F-15; the result was an errant bomb landing on British forces instead of the enemy. Three soldiers killed, two horribly maimed. So every word and digit I spoke would have consequences. We were “providing support”, that was the phrase used constantly, but I realized how euphemistic it was. No less than the pilots, we were sometimes delivering death, and when it came to death, more so than life, you had to be precise.

Recruited from Nepal, from the remotest villages along the foothills of the Himalayas, the Gurkhas had fought in every British war of the last two centuries, and distinguished themselves in each one. They scrapped like tigers, never gave up, and as a result they held a special place in the British Army – and in my heart. I’d been hearing about the Gurkhas since I was a boy: one of the first uniforms I’d ever worn was a Gurkha uniform. At Sandhurst the Gurkhas always played the enemy in military exercises, which always felt

Food was their language of love. And while each Gurkha thought himself a five-star chef, they all had the same speciality. Goat curry.

In the distance were poppy fields. I looked off, thought of the famous poem. In Flanders fields the poppies blow … In Britain the poppy was a symbol of remembrance, but here it was just the coin of the realm. All those poppies would soon be processed into heroin, sales of which would pay for the Taliban bullets fired at us, and the IEDs left for us under roads and wadis.

My mind flashed back to Eton. The fox I’d glimpsed, when stoned, from the window of the loo. So, he really had been a messenger from the future after all. One day you’ll be alone, late at night, in the darkness, hunted like me … see how you like it.

An Australian magazine had outed me, told the world I was in Afghanistan. The magazine was inconsequential, so no one noticed at first, but then some bell-end in America picked up the story, posted it on his worthless website, and that got picked up by the crawlers. Now the news was everywhere. The worst-kept secret in the Milky Way was the presence of one Prince Harry in Helmand Province.

I cherished Chels’s carefree and authentic spirit. She never worried about what other people thought. She wore short skirts and high boots, danced with abandon, drank as much tequila as I did, and I cherished all those things about her … but I couldn’t help worrying how Granny might feel about them. Or the British public. And the last thing I wanted was for Chels to change to accommodate them. I wanted so badly to be a husband, a father … but I just wasn’t sure. It takes a certain kind of person to withstand the scrutiny, Teej, and I don’t know if Chels can handle it. I don’t know that I want to ask her to handle it.

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 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.

Poor Nige … He pressed on. He was, I realize now, one of the most truthful people I’ve ever known, and he knew a secret about truth that many people are unwilling to accept: it’s usually painful. He wanted me to believe in myself, but that belief could never be based on false promises or fake compliments. The royal road to mastery was paved with facts.

I considered leaving the course altogether. I’d never even wanted to fly Apaches, I said to everyone, petulantly. I wanted to fly the Lynx. It was simpler to learn, and I’d get back to the war faster. But my commanding officer, Colonel David Meyer, quashed that idea. Not a chance, Harry. Why, Colonel? Because you’ve had operational ground experience in reconnaissance, you were a very fine FAC, and you’re a bloody good pilot. You’re going to fly Apaches. But— I can tell from the way you fly, the way you read the ground, this is what you were meant to do.

someone on the ground had hit us with a laser pen. I was disoriented. And furious. But I told myself to be grateful for the experience, for the practice. I was also perversely grateful for the stray memory it knocked loose. Mohamed Al Fayed, giving Willy and me laser pens from Harrods, which he owned. He was the father of Mummy’s boyfriend, so maybe he was trying to win us over. If so, job done. We thought those lasers were genius. We whipped them around like light sabres.

Goodbye, Chels. Goodbye, Hazza. The day I got my wings, I figured she got hers. We went to Botswana one last time. One last trip upriver, we said. One last visit to Teej and Mike.

They were hoping to raise millions for Walking With The Wounded, and also to become the first amputees ever to reach the Pole unsupported. They invited me to join them. I wanted to say yes. I was dying to say yes. Just one problem. The trek was in early April, dangerously close to Willy’s announced wedding date. I’d have to get there and back with no hitches, or risk missing the ceremony.

They’d set a world record, raised a truckload of cash for wounded veterans, and reached the bloody North Pole. What a coup. I congratulated them, told them I missed them, wished I could’ve been there. A white lie. My penis was oscillating between extremely sensitive and borderline traumatized. The last place I wanted to be was Frostnipistan.

Marrying your cousin is far less dicey than becoming a profit centre for Murdoch Inc.

In fact, they promised to physically stop me. I was not going to get a tattoo, they said, not on their watch, least of all a foot tattoo of Botswana. They promised to hold me down, knock me out, whatever it took. A tattoo is permanent, Spike! It’s forever! Their arguments and threats are one of my last clear memories from that evening. I gave in. The tattoo could wait till the next day.

Soon after my arrival I met Pa at nearby Birkhall. To my surprise, to my relief, he was gentle. Even bemused. He felt for me, he said, he’d been there, though he’d never been naked on a front page. Actually, that was untrue. When I was about eight years old a German newspaper had published naked photos of him, taken with a telephoto lens while he was holidaying in France. But he and I had both put those photos out of our minds. Certainly he’d felt naked many times before the world, and that was our common ground. We sat by a window and talked for quite a long time about this strange existence of ours, while watching Birkhall’s red squirrels frolic on the lawn.

They cut a hole in the fence? Yep. Why? In short, me. They were looking for Prince Harry, they said. The Taliban actually issued a statement: Prince Harry was our target. And the date of the attack had been carefully chosen as well. They’d timed it, they proclaimed, to coincide with my birthday. I didn’t know if I believed that. I didn’t want to believe it.

The first time you ever start an Apache, going through preflight checks takes one hour, if not more. After a few weeks at Bastion, Dave and I had it down to eight minutes. And it still felt like an eternity. We were always heavy. Brimming with fuel, bristling with a full complement of missiles, plus enough 30-mm rounds to turn a concrete apartment building into Swiss cheese – you could feel all that stuff holding you down, tying you to Earth. My first-ever mission, a TIC, I resented the feeling, the contrast between our urgency and Earth’s gravity.

Taking him meant saving British lives, sparing British families. Taking him meant fewer young men and women wrapped like mummies and shipped home on hospital beds, like the lads on my plane four years earlier, or the wounded men and women I’d visited at Selly Oak

So my goal from the day I arrived was never to go to bed doubting that I’d done the right thing, that my targets had been correct, that I was firing on Taliban and only Taliban, no civilians nearby. I wanted to return to Britain with all my limbs, but more, I wanted to go home with my conscience intact. Which meant being aware of what I was doing, and why I was doing it, at all times.

So, my number: Twenty-five. It wasn’t a number that gave me any satisfaction. But neither was it a number that made me feel ashamed.