Harry (18 page)

When the pupils lined up he picked out twelve-year-old red-haired Matthew Taylor to chat to. Matthew revealed
afterwards: ‘He said to me, “I’m ginger – gingers love gingers.”’ Not an unusual remark for a man who had always been teased about the colour of his hair and could empathise with others who might have suffered similarly.

He went on to meet staff and patients at a children’s
hospital
and, as the day went on, he clearly warmed to royal duty, although he had made it clear when he started his army career that he did not envy his brother having to take it on as a full-time job one day. In the evening he was joined by his friend Prince Seeiso at what was billed as a Lesotho Links Conference.

‘I can’t wait to get back to your country,’ he told Seeiso. He didn’t have long to wait: less than a fortnight later he was once again Africa-bound and this time he took his brother with him to witness the work he had started with the poor and the sick in Lesotho through Sentebale, the charity he had set up in both their names (he was already patron of three UK-based charities: Dolen Cymru, which promotes
activities
that links health organisations in schools and villages in Wales; MapAction, which employs a team of skilled
volunteers
to monitor humanitarian disasters worldwide; and WellChild, which is dedicated to the needs of sick children).

Although it was serious business, fun was not excluded on the princes’ visit: one night Harry, having sampled the local rum, persuaded William to dance with him and William rarely refuses any request from his younger brother to let himself go. Harry encourages William to take risks, even engaging in some very non-royal banter in public: ‘But
the banter gets a lot more fruity when we’re in private,’ admits William.

Harry was now back in the UK and ready to embark on the next stage of his military career. The news that he wished to follow his brother, father and uncle in flying military
helicopters
was revealed in October 2008 as Harry was made an honorary Air Commandant at RAF Honington. After passing the initial aptitude test, he undertook a month-long course and having passed that he proceeded to full flight training early in 2009.

He was based for a while at the Defence Helicopter School at RAF Shawbury on the Welsh borders where,
coincidentally
, William had also been sent after his training on fixed-wing aircraft. For several months the brothers shared a cottage close to the base. ‘For the first time and the last time, I can assure you of that,’ Harry said when they held a press conference. Harry, it appeared, had been constantly nagged by his brother for neglecting his clearing-up duties, although he did do most of the cooking. William also light-heartedly complained that he was kept awake at night by Harry’s
snoring
– a habit he seemed to have picked up from their father since Diana told him as a small boy that that was the reason she and Charles slept in separate rooms. At the same media gathering Harry also took great delight in pointing out that William was losing his hair: ‘That’s pretty rich coming from a ginger,’ William retorted. It was all in good fun and clear to those assembled that no offence was intended and the
brothers
remained the very best of friends.

Their special brand of humour led to the discovery of their mobile phones being bugged. William once left a jokey message on Harry’s cell phone using a high-pitched voice and a South African accent to pretend to be Chelsy giving him hell for visiting a lap-dancing club. The story appeared in reporter Clive Goodman’s column in the
News of the World
. That, and the reporting of other messages left on their phones, convinced them that their messages were being hacked (Goodman subsequently went to prison for the offence) and the Royal Protection Service was informed. Because the messages also gave details of their movements, the police called on the services of the anti-terrorism squad who quickly established that their phones were being hacked and eventually led to the newspaper – the biggest-selling in the world – being closed down by its severely embarrassed owner, the outspoken Rupert Murdoch. The leak had been sealed and Harry was soon able to send his brother messages again without fear of them being published in a downmarket tabloid. But it was an uncomfortable time for all concerned, ‘especially because Harry was known to leave intimate details of his love life on trusted friends’ phones’, according to a member of the royal household. Diana had long been of the opinion that her calls were bugged and had adopted the
codename
‘Julia’ as well as, none too artfully, encoding ‘Highgrove’ as ‘Low Wood’. It fooled no one at GCHQ, which monitored and recorded all her telephone conversations as part of its operation to guard national safety.

After leaving Shawbury in October 2009, Harry moved
to the Army Air Corps (AAC) base close to the Hampshire town of Middle Wallop to begin the eight-month first half of his required training course. There he had to pass his flying assessment in order to determine which of three different helicopters he should train to pilot: the multi-purpose Lynx, the five-seat Gazelle – both used for reconnaissance purposes – or the ultimate ‘war machine’, the Apache, very much an attack aircraft. He says now that he had never been more focused: he desperately wanted to be at the controls of an Apache, not only the most sophisticated of the three but the one that would assure his return to front-line service since the army had already decided that it was no longer safe for him to be on the ground. Harry revealed later that his
preference
was to serve with his men as regular infantry, but at least now he had an ambition that he could fulfil, providing he passed the rigorous training process.

So dedicated was he to his new role and the prospect it offered of him returning to war that Harry’s twenty-fifth birthday passed uncelebrated: in no way was he going to
disobey
his unit’s ten-hour ‘throttle to bottle’ rule preventing pilots from drinking, despite the fact that this was the day on which he came into the first instalment of his multi-million pound inheritance from his mother’s estate – much of which had come from his father in the divorce settlement. The
interest
on his share alone gave him £300,000 a year ‘pocket money’, part of which he donated secretly to Sentebale. Another plus was that the Queen granted him and William their own royal household – one which would take precedence over even Prince
Andrew’s. With offices in St James’s Palace it would take care of the young princes’ public, military and charitable activities. To the princes’ delight Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton – who had been their secretary since March 2005 – was put in charge. Lowther-Pinkerton, who had proved to be a good friend and wise mentor, was equally delighted; he enjoyed working with them. ‘Prince Harry has his moments,’ he said,

In her wisdom, Her Majesty appointed Sir David Manning, former British ambassador to the US, to oversee the whole operation and report to her if any matter needed superior attention. Sir David, she knew, would ensure that not a penny was wasted in the new household. Showing their trust in Manning, Harry and William also appointed him as a trustee of their Royal Foundation, a group charity they conceived in 2009 which took over the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund when it was wound up three years later. One of the foundation’s aims is to promote the welfare of those serving in the armed forces – a cause close to both princes’ hearts. Their support for various charities did not always require their participation as patrons. When Harry started wearing a Help for Heroes wristband, the cause’s takings soared.

Harry did well in his exams and was presented with his flying brevet (wings) by his father on 7 May 2010 at a ceremony at Middle Wallop, a ceremony during which he switched his Blues and Royals Officer’s Service Dress cap for that of the Army Air Corps’ sky blue beret with a Blues and Royals badge. But the big news of the day for Harry was that he had been selected by Army Air Corps commanders to train as an Apache pilot. Harry declared:

In a far less formal note he wrote to a fellow soldier over there: ‘Afghanistan, here I come, better warn the Taliban.’

First, though, Africa once again beckoned. He and William set off for a six-day, three-country visit, their first official overseas tour together, in June 2010. They began in Botswana working for the charity Tusk Trust, of which William had been patron for five years despite never having had an
opportunity
to visit the country. His patronage of this particular charity had been Prince Charles’s idea since it taught
thousands
of children each year about the essential needs of
conservation if the country was to survive. In the presence of supportive media, they witnessed and praised the work of four youngsters from the UK who were working on a Tusk project to turn a disused quarry into a nature reserve. Then, once the accompanying journalists had left, the princes sat down to an informal lunch with the volunteer workers, ‘keeping them in stitches of laughter’, says a royal retainer who was required to stay with the party.

For a short while the brothers split up: Harry couldn’t wait to get to his beloved Lesotho while William remained briefly for more formal activities. The reception Harry got was tremendous and he was delighted to see how the money Sentebale had already raised was being used to help AIDS orphans – a cause his mother championed despite the Queen’s view that it was not an appropriate one for a senior royal to be associated with. Many of the children he had talked to and played with on his earlier visit were delighted to see him. He had promised he would return and here he was. When he joined Harry in Lesotho, William was clearly impressed by the effect his brother was having on the country: everywhere they went Harry was hailed as a hero. It was Harry who had got Sentebale launched, despite William raising money for what was officially their joint charity and both having helped raise £300,000 for that and similar causes with an incredible endurance test (unpublicised) riding motorbikes 1,000 miles across the inhospitable terrain of South Africa’s Eastern Cape the previous year.

Their stay was concluded on a flat note when they watched
a pathetic performance by England’s side in a football match in Cape Town. The England team could manage only a 0–0 draw against Algeria and were booed off the pitch. In the circumstances William was not keen to go to the players’ dressing room when the match ended but Harry persuaded him they should go down ‘to cheer the players up’. Although David Beckham did his best to receive the royal
brothers
gracefully, other players, including a frustrated Wayne Rooney who had had some unkind words to say to the booing fans before he left the pitch, were in no mood to be cheered up. When William tried to find something complimentary to say to the team, Harry, whose preference is for rugby anyway, interjected: ‘Oh, they’ll really enjoy being told how to play better by a posh soldier.’

Even if the footballers were not exactly hailed as heroes on their return to the UK, Harry and William received ample praise for their work with the poor and the sick during their brief African expedition. Just as all seemed well in his life, however, everyone was reminded of Harry’s past reputation as the bad boy of the Royal Family: a video diary filmed during his Sandhurst days emerged showing him
describing
a fellow officer as ‘our little Paki friend’ and later calling a colleague wearing a cloth on his head ‘a raghead’– typical soldier parlance, perhaps, but less palatable from the Queen’s grandson. Considering that he had put his past behind him and had just risked his life for his country he was somewhat disgusted when he had his knuckles rapped by the Prime Minister for the playful remarks (Cameron said the remark
was ‘completely unacceptable’). ‘Actually Cameron was only teasing him,’ explains a senior Downing Street official. ‘He had to say something to him and it seems Harry took it the wrong way. The PM was very grateful to him for the work he had done in Afghanistan and I think the Prince now knows that.’

Harry’s initial annoyance over the PM’s reported comments came in a period when he was still angry about evidence given by Hasnat Khan at a belated inquest into Diana’s death. Despite, or perhaps because of, his intense dislike of Dodi Fayed, the Prince was shocked to learn that Khan had received many death threats during the courtship of his mother, which had begun after she sent flowers to him at the hospital where he worked. Anonymous hate mail included cut-out photographs of the surgeon with a noose around his neck. Could this have been the work of a jealous rival? Harry, according to a source close to him, had his own theories.

In April 2011 he was promoted to captain within the Army Air Corps in recognition of time served in the armed forces. Captain Harry Wales was also awarded the trophy he had most wanted in his life: his Apache Badge. Now he could fly the lethal machine without an instructor and was ready for a further eight-month weapon course in order to become a fully operational Army Air Corps pilot. The ‘Apache Conversion to Type’ course would involve intense ground school
training
, day and night flying and intensive work on a simulator at RAF Wattisham in Suffolk. He and his fellow students would need to undertake fourteen-day flying sorties testing their
ability to fly in cloud and congested airspace. Before
progressing
on to the night-time flying phase, however, Harry was tested using a cockpit blackout system known as ‘the Bag’, an exercise preparing him for flying on the night-vision system displaying thermal imagery into the helmet mounted display over his right eye.