Spare

I carried a small overnight bag containing a few personal items, plus one standard-size ironing board, slung jauntily under my arm like a surfboard. The Army had ordered me to bring it. From here on my shirts and trousers would need to be crease-free.

I knew as much about operating an ironing board as I did about operating a tank—less, actually. But that was now the Army’s problem. I was now the Army’s problem.

I wished them luck.

So did Pa. It was he who dropped me off in Camberley, Surrey, at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst.

May 2005.

He stood to one side and watched me put on my red name tag, Wales, then sign in. He told reporters how proud he was.

Then extended his hand. Off you go, darling boy.

Photo op. Click.

I was assigned to a platoon of twenty-nine young men and women. Early the next day, after pulling on our new combats, we filed into an ancient room, hundreds of years old. You could smell the history—it seemed to come off the wood-paneled walls like steam. We recited an oath to the Queen. I swear allegiance to Crown and country…The lad beside me shot an elbow into my ribs. Bet you say Granny rather than Queen!

That was the last time, for the next five weeks, that he or anyone else would venture a joke. There was nothing funny about boot camp.

Boot camp—such a benign name for what happened. We were pushed to our limits, physically, mentally, spiritually. We were taken—or dragged—to a place beyond our limits, and then a bit further, by a stolid group of lovable sadists called color sergeants. Large, loud, extremely masculine men—and yet they all had tiny little dogs. I’ve never heard or read an explanation for this, and I can’t venture one. I’ll only say that it was odd to see these testosterone-rich, mostly bald ogres cooing at their poodles, shih tzus and pugs.

I’d say they treated us like dogs, except they treated their dogs so much better. With us they never said: There’s a good boy! They got up in our faces, shouted at us through the clouds of their aftershave, and never, ever let up. They belittled us, harassed us, shrieked at us, and made no secret of their intent. They meant to break us.

If they couldn’t break us, brilliant. Welcome to the Army! If they could, even better. Better to know now. Better that they should break us than the enemy.

They used a variety of approaches. Physical duress, psychological intimidation—and humor? I remember one color sergeant pulling me aside. Mr. Wales, I was on guard one day at Windsor Castle, wearing my bearskin, and along came a boy who kicked gravel on my boots! And that boy…was YOU!

He was joking, but I wasn’t sure I should laugh, and I wasn’t sure it was true. I didn’t recognize him, and I certainly didn’t remember kicking gravel on any guardsmen. But if it was true, I apologized and hoped we could put it behind us.

Within two weeks several cadets had tapped out. We woke to find their beds made, their stuff gone. No one thought less of them. This shit wasn’t for everybody. Some of my fellow cadets would confess, before lights out, that they feared being next.

I never did, however. I was, for the most part, fine. Boot camp was no picnic, but I never wavered in my belief that I was exactly where I was meant to be. They can’t break me, I thought. Is it, I wondered, because I’m already broken?

Also, no matter what they did to us, it was done away from the press, so for me every day was a kind of holiday. The training center was like Club H. No matter what the color sergeants dished out, there was always, always the compensatory bonus of no paps. Nothing could really hurt me in a place where the press couldn’t find me.

And then they found me. A reporter from The Sun sneaked onto the grounds and shambled around, holding a phony bomb, trying to prove—what? No one knew. The Sun said their reporter, this faux flâneur, was trying to expose the training center’s lax security, to prove that Prince Harry was in danger.

The truly scary part was that some readers actually believed their rubbish.

54.

Every day, upon waking at five a.m., we were forced to down a huge bottle of water. The bottle was Army-issued, black plastic, a leftover from the Boer War. Any liquid inside tasted of first-generation plastic. And piss. Plus, it was piss warm. So, after the guzzling, moments before setting out on our morning run, some of us would fall to the ground and vomit the water straight back up.

No matter. Next day, you had to guzzle that plastic piss water again, from the same water bottle, and then get out there for another post-vomit run.