Spare

At the end of each day I’d sit in my cell, bulling my boots, spitting on them, rubbing them, making them mirrors in which I could see my shorn head. No matter what institution I landed in, it seemed, a tragically bad haircut was the first order of business. Then I’d text Chels. (I was allowed to keep my mobile, for security reasons.) I might tell her how things were going, tell her I missed her. Then I’d loan my phone to any other cadets who might want to text their girlfriends or boyfriends.

Then it was lights-out.

No problem. I was no longer remotely afraid of the dark.

58.

It was now official. I was no longer Prince Harry. I was Second Lieutenant Wales of the Blues and Royals, second oldest regiment of the British Army, part of the Household Cavalry, bodyguards to the Monarch.

The “passing out,” as they called it, took place on April 12, 2006.

On hand were Pa and Camilla, Grandpa, Tiggy and Marko.

And, of course, Granny.

She hadn’t attended a passing-out parade for decades, so her appearance was a dazzling honor. She smiled for all to see as I marched past.

And Willy saluted. He was at Sandhurst too now. A fellow cadet. (He’d started after me, because he’d gone to university first.) He couldn’t resort to his typical attitude when we were sharing an institution, couldn’t pretend not to know me—or he’d be insubordinate.

For one brief moment, Spare outranked Heir.

Granny inspected the troops. When she came to me, she said: Oh…hello.

I smiled. And blushed.

The passing-out ceremony was followed by the playing of “Auld Lang Syne,” and then the college adjutant rode his white horse up the steps of the Old College.

Last, there was a lunch in the Old College. Granny gave a lovely speech. As the day petered out, the adults left, and the real partying began. A night of serious drinking, raucous laughter. My date was Chels. There was eventually a second passing out, as it were. I woke the next morning with a wide grin and a slight headache.

Next stop, I said to the shaving mirror, Iraq.

Specifically, southern Iraq. My unit would be relieving another unit, which had spent months doing advanced reconnaissance. Dangerous work, constantly dodging roadside IEDs and snipers. In that same month ten British soldiers had been killed. In the previous six months, forty.

I searched my heart. I wasn’t fearful. I was committed. I was eager. But also: war, death, whatever, anything was better than remaining in Britain, which was its own kind of battle. Just recently, the papers had run a story about Willy leaving a voicemail for me, pretending to be Chels. They’d also run a story about me asking JLP for help on a Sandhurst research project. Both stories, for once, were true. The question was—how could the papers have known such deeply private things?

It made me paranoid. Willy too. It made us reconsider Mummy’s so-called paranoia, view it through a very different lens.

We began to examine our inner circle, to question our most trusted friends—and their friends. With whom had they been speaking? In whom had they confided? No one was above suspicion because no one could be. We even doubted our bodyguards, and we’d always worshipped our bodyguards. (Hell, officially I was now a bodyguard—the Queen’s bodyguard.) They’d always been like big brothers to us. But now they were also suspects.

For a fraction of a second we even doubted Marko. That was how toxic the suspicion became. No one was above it. Some person, or persons, extremely close to me and Willy, was sneaking stuff to the newspapers, so everyone needed to be considered.

What a relief it will be, I thought, to be in a proper war zone, where none of this is part of my daily calculus.

Please, put me on a battlefield where there are clear rules of engagement.

Where there’s some sense of honor.

part 2 bloody, but unbowed

1.

Britain’s Ministry of Defence told the world in February 2007 that I was deploying, that I would be commanding a group of light tanks along the Iraqi border, near Basra. It was official. I was off to war.

Public reaction was peculiar. Half of Britons were furious, calling it dreadful to risk the life of the Queen’s youngest grandson. Spare or not, they said, it’s unwise to send a royal into a war zone. (It was the first time in twenty-five years that such a thing had been done.)

Half, however, said bravo. Why should Harry get special treatment? What a waste of taxpayers’ money it would be to train the boy as a soldier and then not to use him.

If he dies, he dies, they said.

The enemy certainly felt that way. By all means, said the insurgents, who were trying to foment a civil war across Iraq, send us the boy.

One of the insurgent leaders extended a formal invitation worthy of high tea.

“We are awaiting the arrival of the young handsome spoiled prince with bated breath…”

There was a plan for me, the insurgent leader said. They were going to kidnap me, then decide what to do with me—torture, ransom, kill.