Spare

First, I flew with my squadron to Cyprus, for what the Army called “decompression.” I hadn’t had any mandated decompression after my last tour, so I was excited, though not as much as my bodyguards. Finally! We can have a bloody cold beer!

Everyone was issued exactly two cans. No more. I didn’t like beer, so I handed mine over to a soldier who looked like he needed it more than me. He reacted as if I’d given him a Rolex.

We were then taken to a comedy show. Attendance was quasi-mandatory. Whoever organized it had had good intentions: a bit of levity after a tour of hell. And, to be fair, some of us did laugh. But most didn’t. We were struggling and didn’t know we were struggling. We had memories to process, mental wounds to heal, existential questions to sort. (We’d been told that a padre was available if we needed to talk, but I remember no one going near him.) So we just sat at the comedy show in the same way we’d sat in the VHR tent. In a state of suspended animation. Waiting.

I felt bad for those comedians. One tough gig.

Before we left Cyprus someone told me I was all over the papers.

Oh yeah?

The interview.

Shit. I’d completely forgotten.

Apparently I’d caused quite a stir by admitting that I’d killed people. In a war.

I was criticized up and down for being…a killer?

And being blithe about it.

I’d mentioned, in passing, that the Apache controls were reminiscent of video-game controls. And thus:

Harry compares killing to video game!

I threw down the paper. Where was that padre?

59.

I texted Cress, told her I was home.

She texted back, said she was relieved, which made me relieved.

I hadn’t been sure what to expect.

I wanted to see her. And yet we didn’t make a plan. Not in that first exchange. There was some distance there, some stiffness.

You sound different, Harry.

Well, I don’t feel different.

I didn’t want her to think I was different.

A week later, some mates gave a dinner party. Welcome home, Spike! At my mate Arthur’s place. Cress turned up with my cousin Eugenie—a.k.a. Euge. I hugged them both, saw the shock on their faces.

They said I looked like a completely different person.

Stockier? Bigger? Older?

Yes, yes, all that. But also something else they couldn’t name.

Whatever it was, it seemed frightening or off-putting to Cressida.

We agreed, therefore, that this wasn’t a reunion. Couldn’t be. Can’t have a reunion with someone you don’t know. If we wanted to keep seeing each other—and I certainly did—we’d have to start again.

Hello, I’m Cress.

Hello, I’m Haz. Nice to meet you.

60.

I got up each day, went to the base, did my work, enjoyed none of it. It felt pointless.

And boring. I was bored to tears.

More, for the first time in years, I was without a purpose. A goal.

What’s next? I asked myself every night.

I begged my commanding officers to send me back.

Back where?

To the war.

Oh, they said, ha-ha, no.

In March 2013 word came down that the Palace wanted to send me on another royal tour. My first since the Caribbean. This time: America.

I was glad for the break in the monotony. On the other hand I was also worried about returning to the scene of the crime. I imagined days and days of questions about Vegas.

No, Palace courtiers assured me. Impossible. Time and the war had eclipsed Vegas. This was strictly a goodwill tour, to promote the rehabilitation of wounded British and American soldiers. No one is going to mention Vegas, sir. Cut to May 2013, me touring the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy, alongside New Jersey governor Chris Christie. The governor gifted me a blue fleece, which the press spun…as his way of keeping me clothed. Actually, Christie spun it that way too. A reporter asked him what he thought of my time in Las Vegas, and Christie vowed that if I spent the whole day with him, “nobody’s going to get naked.” The line got a big laugh, because Christie is famously stout.

Before Jersey I’d gone to Washington, D.C., met with President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, visited Arlington National Cemetery, laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I’d laid dozens of wreaths before, but the ritual was different in America. You didn’t place the wreath on the grave yourself; a white-gloved soldier placed it with you, and then you laid your hand singly, for one beat, upon the wreath. This extra step, this partnering with another living soldier, moved me. Holding my hand to the wreath for that extra second, I found myself a bit wobbly, my mind flooding with images of all the men and women with whom I’d served. I thought about death, injury, grief, from Helmand Province to Hurricane Sandy to the Alma tunnel, and I wondered how other people just got on with their lives, whereas I felt such doubt and confusion—and something else.