Harry said his goodbyes to Chelsy and flew back to England at the end of what must have been a very special adventure. More in love than ever the young Royal returned home ready to begin his toughest challenge yet, Sandhurst. This romantic trip to Botswana with Chelsy marked the end of Harry’s whirlwind gap year, which had cemented his place in the public’s mind.
Leaving school and heading straight into the Army may have been unthinkable for Harry. But there is no doubt it would have saved him from a lot of adverse attention. When he walked out of Eton Collage for the last time in June 2003 he was still off limits to the press. A young Royal still protected by the rules set up in the wake of his mother’s death. But now, at the end of his two-year ‘gap’, as he prepared to walk into Sandhurst for the first time, Harry was one of the most talked-about Royals in his family.
Pictures of him cavorting at the Rugby World Cup in Australia, getting into a scuffle with photographers during a night out in London, and wearing THAT outfit had elevated Harry to front-page status. It was this two-year period that created the image of Prince Harry that we all know. He had inadvertently cemented himself a reputation as a boozy, party-loving young man.
Glimpses of his softer side had certainly come through as well. The documentary he had made while setting up his AIDS charity in Lesotho had shown a prince with his mother’s magic touch. The image of him cuddling a little AIDS orphan and pledging to ‘never forget’ the children of the tiny African kingdom offered a glimpse of his potential. For the first time it appeared Harry was someone who could perhaps one day continue his mother’s legacy. A prince who makes the front pages is a prince who can make a difference to those who need help the most. Whatever was going wrong in Princess Diana’s life, she had an inbuilt ability to use her high profile to shed light on the plight of others.
For his part, there were signs that Harry could one day do the same. But there were other concerns about this young Royal, who had spent two years refusing to knuckle down and begin life outside of school. Every scrape he had found himself in during that period had inevitably been followed by commentators questioning whether he was out of control.
By far the most serious slip-up had been the Nazi outfit, but being accused of attacking a photographer also carried a high risk for anyone in the public gaze. It gifted those that were determined to criticize the Royal family a chance to lay into the Queen’s grandson. And even the sight of Harry charging around the world to exotic locations flanked by police protection officers paid for by the taxpayer was enough to make the hairs on the back of palace advisers’ heads stand on end. It laid him open to claims that he was enjoying the lifestyle of a jet-setting prince without paying the slightest bit of attention to the duty that comes with the role.
For many people in the public eye these examples would have been enough to cast a dark shadow over their reputations. A politician who punched a photographer would have done untold damage to his career. One who dressed as a Nazi, just when the world was remembering the plight of those killed in the Hitler’s concentration camps, would be lucky to keep his job. And a politician who stood accused of wasting taxpayers’ money cavorting around the world with a beautiful new girlfriend would be forced to fall on his sword.
But Harry was not a politician. The other legacy of his wild ‘gap year’ was the Midas touch he enjoys. The net effect of all these scrapes was simple – they made him even more popular.
By the time Harry started at Sandhurst in May 2005, he was the unlikely darling of the British public. Here was a Royal with a rock and roll quality. After all, what would the nation really want from a 20-year-old prince? Would they want him to hide away on the family estates admiring their stamp collections and studying the classics? Or would they prefer a prince who wore his heart on his sleeve, enjoyed being out with friends and had that glint in his eye that suggested the loveable rascal beneath?
The more Harry subjected himself to pompous criticism, the more the general public sided with him. This was not a media strategy, more an inevitable consequence of his natural way with the public beginning to shine through.
By the time Harry started at Sandhurst he was also deeply in love. His roller-coaster relationship with Chelsy had given him strength to cope with his critics. In her Harry had found a soulmate, interested in him for who he was. She had helped him deal with some of the anger issues that lingered from his mother’s death. She had given him the confidence to be himself even when others were accusing him of being a cheat. Above all, in Chelsy he had found someone who shared his sense of humour, love of Africa and desire never to take life too seriously.
It was going to be a tough challenge getting through Sandhurst and reaching the standards required to become an officer in the British Army but this challenge was to be made all the more difficult as he pined for Chelsy and had to knuckle down without her for weeks at a time.
A Sandhurst source, speaking on the eve of Harry’s first day, explained: ‘Cadets often start Sandhurst in long-term relationships. Very few pass out the other side with the same person.’
CHAPTER 6
IRAQ BLOW
‘We have considered your story carefully and on this occasion we would really urge you not to run it,’ said Paddy Harverson, the Prince of Wales’s communications director.
It was an unusual request and proof that they were taking my call very seriously indeed. Very few times did the men in grey suits beg us not to run a story. If what we were proposing to write was inaccurate, then they would always put us right. It was far rarer, however, for the press office to come back with a request that we pull a story, especially when there was no public interest reason for them objecting.
Hours earlier I had ‘put in the call’ to Clarence House to tell them we were planning to run a story from a contact out in Iraq. The source had interviewed a senior commander of the Mahdi Army, who had issued a direct threat to Prince Harry.
The insurgent leader and radical cleric Mojtaba al-Sadr had told our man: ‘One of our aims is to capture Harry. We have people inside the British bases to inform us on when he will arrive. We have a special unit that would work to track him down, with informants inside the bases.’
He added: ‘Not only us, the Mahdi Army will try to capture him, but every person who hates the British and Americans will try to get him. All the Mujahideens in Iraq, the al-Qaeda, the Iranians, all will try to get him.’
What could have been dismissed as a bit of mischief-making or insurgent propaganda appeared to be a real and present threat.
It was April 2007. Harry’s unit was just days away from being deployed to Basra in Iraq, where the Ministry of Defence had confirmed the 22-year-old officer would spend six months in the front line.
At the time we got the tip-off it was clear the insurgent offensive against the British had been dramatically stepped up. The use of roadside bombs against our boys’ patrols had already claimed eleven lives in the past four weeks.
Mojtaba’s comments simply could not be dismissed. There was evidence he had a number of men under his command as well as weaponry, including rockets and automatic rifles. The troops in Iraq had indeed come under sustained attack in the months leading up to Harry’s deployment and this had caused deep concerns at the highest levels.
The then Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt, had been in constant contact with Harry’s private secretary, Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, a former SAS major. Ever since Harry’s outspoken remarks during his twenty-first birthday interview – when he had insisted he would not ‘drag my sorry arse through Sandhurst’ if he couldn’t go to war – General Dannatt had been aware of how high the stakes were. If the young Royal had been banned from the front line there was every chance the hot-headed soldier would have quit the Army. And if that happened, the top brass would face a barrage of criticism. Why were commanders prepared to send normal soldiers to war to be killed, but not Harry?
Just two months earlier, in February 2007, General Dannatt had delig
hted Harry by agreeing to deploy him with the unit he had trained with since passing out of Sandhurst, the Household Cavalry’s Blues and Royals regiment. They had made the bold decision that he would head to the front line to command a unit of twelve men, in exactly the way Harry had been prepared.
When Lowther-Pinkerton gave Harry the news, he was elated. For nearly six months he had been busting a gut in the gruelling build-up training that always preceded a real deployment.
There is a common misconception among the general public about the way soldiers feel about being deployed to war. This is what they are trained to do. It is the reason they join the forces in the first place. And while every soldier’s experience in a war is different, ultimately they are trained and willing to serve their country, no matter how dangerous their mission.
In a bid to end the months of will he, won’t he speculation, the MoD and the palace made the unusual decision in February to release a joint statement insisting that Cornet Wales, as Harry was known in his regiment, would serve in Iraq. He was to carry out ‘a normal troop commander’s role’ leading a troop of twelve men in four Scimitar armoured reconnaissance vehicles, each with a crew of three.
News of the decision was even accompanied by praise from the then Prime Minister Tony Blair, who described Harry as a ‘brave and determined young man’ with ‘a very special character’.
It meant that Harry would become the first senior Royal to serve his Queen and country in the theatre of war since his uncle Prince Andrew had served with distinction in the Falklands, way back in 1982.
A senior Royal source recalled Harry’s reaction to being allowed to fight in the front line: ‘This was all Harry had dreamed of since being a boy. Even as a young child he had a fascination with soldiers, tanks and all things military. But from the day he set foot at Sandhurst he knew that his dream of serving his country could be put under threat for political reasons.
‘Despite the doubts, throughout the end of 2006 Harry had committed himself 100 per cent to the regiment’s pre-deployment training. He had shown real determination to make the grade, even performing with distinction during exercises in Scotland and South Wales. So when his private secretary broke the news that he would be allowed to command his men, Harry punched the air in delight.
‘The very last thing on his mind were the potential dangers in Iraq. As far as Harry was concerned he was a soldier and he wanted more than anything to serve his country, whatever the risks. Harry may have accepted he was a Royal, but as far as he was concerned his military career had nothing whatsoever to do with his accident of birth. Being a prince and being an officer in the British Army were, in Harry’s mind, two totally separate entities. This was one of the main reasons a military career was so appealing to Harry. As an officer he could be normal. His grandmother may have been the head of the Armed Forces, but this didn’t make a jot of difference in his mind. He was a soldier first and a Royal second.’
When I contacted Clarence House that day I had told them exactly what we were proposing to write. This was a serious subject and a story that we felt we were entitled to publish. It had been put at the top of the news list, which meant there was every chance it would feature on the front page of the following day’s paper.
The problem was that Mojtaba’s chilling threats posed a nightmare for General Dannatt and Clarence House. In his rant Mojtaba had added: ‘For me he is just a British soldier and he should be killed if he comes to Iraq, but let’s be realistic, we can kill hundreds of British soldiers before forcing them to withdraw. But Harry is a much bigger catch and we will force the British to come on their knees and talk to us.’
Even if these comments were nothing more than idle threats, the reality was they were rooted in truth. By putting the third in line to the British throne in Iraq there was at least an outside chance that he could be kidnapped or killed. Even if Harry himself completed the six-month deployment unscathed, what if his mere presence in Basra led to an increase in insurgent attacks? Could General Dannatt really risk the grieving mother or wife of one of Harry’s fellow soldiers blaming the young Royal for their family’s loss? Maybe the Mahdi commander’s comments were just propaganda, but could they really take that risk?
By the time I received the return call from Paddy Harverson later that day, these were exactly the questions our proposed story had raised. General Dannatt himself had been informed, and the Ministry of Defence were preparing to stand by their decision to send Harry. A statement from the MoD’s well-oiled media unit had been drafted and it would try to dismiss the comments as ‘wild’ and ‘unfounded’.
From The Sun’s point of view, running that story the following day would spark a huge reaction and reopen the debate about Harry’s deployment. But what we had to consider was the impact running it could have on Harry and his fellow soldiers weeks away from heading to Iraq. By begging us not to run the story, Clarence House was throwing the gauntlet down to The Sun.
We had a good relationship with Harry, and our readers were generally pro-Royal. More importantly we were without doubt the Forces’ favourite newspaper, read by servicemen and women in their tens of thousands. How would they react if their paper of choice was seen to be spouting the propaganda of the insurgents who were killing our troops with chilling regularity? It was certainly not the job or policy of The Sun newspaper to gift the enemy of British troops a front-page platform to voice their hatred and threats.
The request from Clarence House was passed to the very top of the paper. The editor had to decide whether a good scoop was worth the possible negative reaction from readers.
As the Royal correspondent I was asked what I made of the situation. My advice was that the story was clearly legitimate, as the palace had not tried to claim it was inaccurate. But I was also of the view that publishing the story might well damage the paper’s good relationship with Harry himself.
We would never pull a story as a favour to any member of the Royal family but on this occasion I knew full well that Harry would be furious that we had drawn attention to the rants of an insurgent and, in so doing, risked the plug being pulled on his deployment.
Ultimately the decision was made to spike the story. It was my job to pass this decision on to Paddy Harverson, but to make it clear that this was a goodwill gesture from a paper that supported both the military and Prince Harry.
We couldn’t stop the story from getting out, however. All we could do was reassure the palace and the MoD that it would not appear in The Sun. The information had come from a respected freelance fixer who lived in Iraq. As soon as he was turned down by The Sun it was fairly inevitable that he would look to place the story elsewhere.
In the end that was exactly what happened. A few days later the whole story appeared in the Guardian newspaper. The palace had once again appealed for it to be shelved but the paper refused and ran it anyway.
It is always disappointing to see a story you have worked on appear in a different publication but to this day I believe we were right to pull it. Often reporting on the Royals is a little like covering a never-ending soap opera. Births, deaths, marriages and love affairs are the staple of Royal reporting but from time to time it is important to remember that you are writing about real people. If there was even the slightest chance that the threat to a British soldier could be increased by publishing a story, then in my view, the paper has a duty to use common sense.
It is worth remembering that the news about Harry‘s deployment reached the public domain in the first place via the statement issued by the Ministry of Defence and the palace. After that there was always a risk, if not an inevitability, that this high-profile deployment would be seized on by the insurgents trying to score a bit of propaganda. But the potential consequences of the story of the cleric’s threat getting out there were the straw that broke the camel’s back.
When the Guardian ran the story the Ministry of Defence did its best to stand firm. It issued the statement trying to dismiss the insurgent’s comments
as ‘blatant propaganda from those who want to tear Iraq apart’.
However, one line in the carefully drafted statement did give us all a clue as to what was really going on behind the scenes. The decision to deploy Harry, it said, remained ‘under constant review’, a worrying hint that in spite of the official line there was a bit more to it than met the eye. In reality this meant that the decision was being looked at, and the MoD had to have a ‘get out’ plan if the generals and politicians were forced to make a U-turn. Sadly for Harry, this statement seemed to indicate that the writing was on the wall for his dreams of being deployed to Iraq.
It wasn’t the running of the story itself that forced them to rethink the deployment. But once it had been published, the reality was that any insurgent in Iraq who hadn’t already thought about targeting Harry would now be well aware of the bounty put on the head of the ‘infidel prince’. By the time Harry and his unit would set foot in the war zone, just about every Iraqi fighter would be looking for him.
It was later claimed that pictures of Harry had been printed from the internet and were being handed around the streets of Basra. While these reports were never confirmed, they gave weight to the view that putting Harry into that theatre would be madness.
Behind the scenes British intelligence worked tirelessly to try and assess how ‘credible’ the threats being made against Harry really were. And within days they reported back with the verdict that was to devastate the prince – the threats were credible and the risk of sending Harry to Iraq was extremely high.
In the first week of May, General Dannatt himself visited Basra to meet troops and commanders on the ground. One of the reasons for this visit was to talk to his commanders and hear their honest feelings about the prince joining them on the ground.
One senior military source recalled: ‘General Dannatt took the issue of Harry in Iraq as an almost personal mission. He was very keen to allow the prince his wish to serve in Basra. But when he visited the base he was told in no uncertain terms that Prince Harry’s presence there would be more of a hindrance than a help.
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