Spare

As I reached the lectern, which I’d personally and carefully positioned, I berated myself, because it afforded a perfect view of all the competitors. All those trusting, wholesome, expectant faces—counting on me. I forced myself to look away, to look at nothing. Hurrying, hyper-conscious of the clock, I bleated out: For some of those taking part this will be a stepping-stone to elite sport. But for others it will mark the end of a chapter in their recovery and the beginning of a new one.

I went and found my seat, down front, beside Pa, who put a hand on my shoulder. Well done, darling boy. He was being kind. He knew I’d rushed the speech. For once I was glad not to hear the raw truth from him.

Just on the numbers, Invictus was a hit. Two million people watched on TV, thousands filled the arenas for each event. Among the highlights, for me, was the wheelchair rugby final, Britain versus America, thousands of fans cheering Britain on to victory in the Copper Box.

Wherever I went that week, people came up to me, shook my hand, told me their stories. Children, parents, grandparents, always with tears in their eyes, told me that these games had restored something they’d feared forever lost: the true spirit of a son, a daughter, a brother, a sister, a mum, a dad. One woman tapped me on the shoulder and told me I’d resurrected her husband’s smile.

Oh, that smile, she said. I hadn’t seen it since he got injured.

I knew Invictus would do some good in the world, I always knew, but I was caught off guard by this wave of appreciation and gratitude. And joy.

Then came the emails. Thousands, each more moving than the last.

I’ve had a broken back for five years, but after watching these brave men and women I’ve got off the sofa today and I’m ready to begin again.

I’ve been suffering depression since returning from Afghanistan but this demonstration of human courage and resilience has made me see…

At the closing ceremony, moments after I introduced Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters, a man and woman approached, their young daughter between them. The daughter was wearing a pink hoodie and orange ear defenders. She looked up at me: Thank you for making my daddy…Daddy again.

He’d won a gold medal.

Just one problem, she said. She couldn’t see the Foo Fighters.

Ah well, we can’t have that!

I lifted her onto my shoulders and together the four of us watched, danced, sang, and celebrated being alive.

It was my thirtieth birthday.

77.

Shortly after the games I informed the Palace that I’d be leaving the Army. Elf and I worked on the public announcement; it was hard to get the wording just right, to explain it to the public, maybe because I was having trouble explaining it to myself. In hindsight I see that it was a hard decision to explain because it wasn’t a decision at all. It was just time.

But time for what, exactly, besides leaving the Army? From now on I’d be something I’d never been: a full-time royal.

How would I even do that?

And was that what I wanted to be?

In a lifetime of existential crises, this was a bugger. Who are you when you can no longer be the thing you’ve always been, the thing you’ve trained to be?

Then one day I thought I glimpsed the answer.

It was a crisp Tuesday, near the Tower of London. I was standing in the middle of the street and suddenly here he came, yomping down the road—young Ben, the soldier with whom I’d flown back from Afghanistan in 2008, the soldier I’d visited and cheered as he climbed a wall with his new prosthetic leg. Six years after that flight, as promised, he was running a marathon. Not the London marathon, which would’ve been miraculous on its own. He was running his own marathon, along a route he’d designed himself, in the outline of a poppy laid over the city of London.

A staggering thirty-one miles, he’d done the full circuit to raise money and awareness—and heart rates.

I’m in shock, he said on finding me there.

You’re in shock? I said. That makes two of us.

Seeing him out there, still being a soldier, despite no longer being a soldier—that was the answer to the riddle with which I’d been struggling so long.

Question: How do you stop being a soldier, when a soldier is all you’ve ever been or wanted to be?

Answer: You don’t.

Even when you stop being a soldier, you don’t have to stop being a soldier. Ever.

78.