by Chris Harris
As the vehicles slowly approached, we all stood there quietly. Jerry, Pete and I walked forward a few paces into the middle of the road and waited for them to arrive. I was glad that the guns in the turrets were pointing to the side, the vehicles were intimidating enough without having them pointed at us.
The lead vehicle stopped and a soldier in full kit climbed out and made his way towards us. “Hello there. Which one of you is Jerry?” he asked.
Jerry said, “I am.”
The soldier took a photograph out of a pouch on his body armour and held it up, comparing Jerry to it. He was quiet for a minute as he studied us all individually, and then he looked at our families and friends, standing a few yards behind us.
“Well I’d say you were all genuine!” he said finally, extending his hand and shaking ours. “Sorry about that. We’ve been monitoring you via UAV since the initial contact, but I’m the first ‘eyes on the ground’ we’ve had. I had to confirm that Jerry isn’t being held under duress.” Unclipping his radio handset from his body armour he said, “Would you excuse me for a moment?”
As he Turned away, we heard him say, “No, confirm Jerry situation good.”
Grinning, he turned back, “We just had to use your code words, they were so ‘special’. Now if you don’t mind, my men need to do a quick security sweep of the area before the main convoy arrives.”
He waved at the soldier at the front of the lead vehicle. In response the rear doors opened on both vehicles and sixteen heavily armed soldiers stepped out.
“Don’t worry, this won’t take long. It’s just standard procedure. The UAVs haven’t picked up anything in the local area apart from the locations of the other groups you’ve given us, (they’d requested this information during a previous radio conversation as part of their route surveillance).
He apologised for not introducing himself properly, “Captain Wales, Commander of the expedition’s lead element.”
A few minutes later a soldier approached and told him that the area was clear. “Good. Maintain a perimeter until the rest arrive. But monitor the UAV operator’s channel closely.” Reaching into another pocket, he pulled out a bag of tea bags, smiled and said, “I don’t know about my men, but I’m desperate for a cup of tea. I couldn’t borrow some hot water could I? I’ve got some milk and sugar in the back of the vehicle if you want some.”
There was something familiar about the Captain, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Laughing, I replied, “No, we’re fine for milk and sugar. Come down to our kitchen area. I’m sure we can spare you some water.”
“How long will the rest take to arrive?” Pete asked.
“Oh, about thirty minutes, I would guess. We regrouped at the motorway junction and it’ll probably take them that long to get moving again?”
“How many of you are there?” I asked, still trying to place where I knew him from.
“We’re a complete circus. If Colonel Moore hadn’t overridden a lot of requests, it would have been worse! We are one hundred and fifty soldiers plus support staff and twenty civvies. Just under two hundred of us, I believe.”
A look of horror must have passed over our faces. “Oh, don’t you worry about it,” said Captain Wales, “We’re very self-sufficient. We’ll try not to get in your way too much.”
“It’s not that,” replied Pete. “The ladies have been baking cakes and are now cooking a Christmas dinner we were hoping to share with you. I just don’t think we have enough to go around. They’re going to be mortified!”
Lowering his voice Captain Wales said, “I believe we’re planning something similar. So shall we keep the numbers to ourselves until they turn up? We wouldn’t want the lovely ladies to get all in a tizzy, would we?”
I agreed and turning to everyone, I suggested we head back to the communal area, as the others wouldn’t be arriving for at least another half an hour.
It took a bit of persuasion to tear the children (and some of the grown up children) away from the excitement of admiring the armoured vehicles and soldiers.
The Captain walked back to the barricades with us, escorted by two of his men. As we were walking, he removed his helmet. Then it hit me. It was Prince Harry!
“You’re…you’re … him!” I stammered.
“Yes, sorry,” he said, looking a little embarrassed. “It’s a bit awkward I know, but I’m better at the soldier stuff than the royal stuff, so I volunteered to lead the mission.”
We were all shocked. I didn’t really know what to say next. It wasn’t often you met and got to chat with a member of the Royal Family. And here we were, about to offer him a cup of tea and a slice of homemade cake! The only way I could think to deal with it, was to carry on as normal.
I shook his hand again, “What do we call you? You’re a lot more used to this than we are. If you could give us an etiquette briefing I think it would save a few embarrassing moments for everyone.”
With a straight face, he replied, “Your Royal Highness would be the correct way to address me, followed by a short bow.” At the looks on our faces he laughed and said, “I’m sorry, it gets me every time I do it. I do apologise. Call me Captain or just simply Harry, or if that’s too much for you call me Sir, but I’d much prefer Captain or Harry.”
Taking an instant liking to him, I decided to go for broke. “Harry, could I offer you a seat and a cup of tea?’”
Handing the tea bags over to me, he said, “Yes, but could you possibly see that my men get a mug first. I’d really appreciate it.”
He went up another few notches on my respect rating. I spotted Allan and Michelle, who were walking over to us arm in arm, and gave them a big smile. They’d missed all the excitement of the arrival and looked a bit lost in each other.
Allan didn’t notice Prince Harry sitting on a bench in full kit until he was right in front of him. He spluttered, let go of Michelle’s arm, and tried to tidy up his uniform with one hand and give a salute with his other, while coming to attention and saying, “SIR!”
Michelle almost fell over when she realised who he was saluting.
“Thank you, Constable,” said Harry, smiling, “but please relax, I’m just an Army Captain.”
Standing up, he shook Allan’s hand and said, “You must be PC Harris. Thank you for not forgetting your duty, and for trying to serve these people, when most people had given up and were only looking out for themselves. You’re a credit to your uniform and to the Government, who, I’m sure, will want to acknowledge your service at some point in the future.”
Allan went bright red, turned to Michelle and said, “Sir, may I introduce Michelle, my fiancée, to you.”
At the mention of the word fiancée, we all forgot about the presence of the Prince, and the cheering and clapping spread as the news was quickly passed around. Everyone rushed forward to congratulate the happy couple. The women all burst into tears and the men immediately started talking about the stag do.
Harry came up to me and said, “A recent decision I take it?”
“Yes. They only managed to get together an hour or so ago, despite everybody else knowing they were in love. They were the only ones that didn’t. But being engaged, that’s taken us all by surprise.”
“What you’ve all managed to accomplish here, from what I have been told and what I have seen in the short time I’ve been here, is nothing short of a miracle,” said Harry, seriously. “I believe you’re mainly to thank for this, Tom. People are so happy that they are getting married and planning a future. Do you know how powerful and important that is?”
“I wouldn’t say that, Sir.” (I don’t know why, but it seemed appropriate to call him “Sir” when we were talking business).
“All I did was work out beforehand that it was going to happen. Yes, I’d prepared for something like this, so I did have food and equipment stored away, but without all the other people joining in, we wouldn’t have survived. We wouldn’t have made it past the first attack. Everyone’s played an important part in this
group’s survival. I’m absolutely over the moon about Allan and Michelle and now you’ve said it, I can see it’s another landmark we’ve achieved.” I paused for a moment, thinking.
“Tom, I think we all know that’s not true, but I admire your modesty. I think you’ll have an important role in helping this country get back on its feet.”
I couldn’t help adding, “You mean your country Sir. You’re the Royal Family!”
Laughing, he replied, “No it’s not mine, its Grandmama’s really!”
Changing the subject away from me, I asked him why a leading member of the royal family would be “out in the line of fire”.
“I’m hardly a leading member anymore. My brother keeps producing babies! But now I’m further down the royal chain, I get a bit more freedom. William can have the job, he’ll be far better at it than me. And since there are currently no royal engagements in my diary, I thought the least I could do was help out and do what I’ve been trained to do. I did pull a few strings to get on this expedition, but I may as well get some use out of my name.”
“How many Royals are at your ‘Secret Base’?” I asked.
“Oh not many. I’m not really sure what I’m allowed to say, because I wasn’t paying attention at that part of the briefing. Let’s wait for the main element to arrive and I’m sure all will be revealed.”
I knew he was stalling, but realised that it wasn’t worth pushing it. As he’d said, all would be revealed shortly.
Understanding everyone’s curiosity and noticing that most people were just staring at him or pointing him out to their children, he turned and said to everyone,
“Hello all. Yes it’s me! We’re all going to be very busy, as in a short while, as you know, a lot more visitors will be arriving. We’re going to be here for a few days, so I’ll get the chance to introduce myself to all of you, but I will need to get my men settled in and equipment set up. If I could just have some time to do my job, I would appreciate it.”
A message must have come through on his radio, because he held his hand up to his earpiece and listened for a moment. He replied, looked up at Pete and me and said, “They’re going to be here in about five minutes, shall we make our way to the top of the road?”
I nodded and Pete told everybody to start heading in that direction.
CHAPTER SIX
As we waited at the top of the road, we heard the distant sound of lots of engines. It seemed an alien sound after the enforced silence of the past couple of months. I couldn’t help wondering how many people would hear the noise and come to investigate.
We hadn’t had a chance to inform the other groups in the area about what was happening. We would need to go and see them soon. In the meantime, if certain undesirable individuals or groups decided to pay us a visit, aside from our own highly effective security force, we now had the might of the British Army protecting us.
The first armoured vehicle came into view. Then the convoy appeared. There were many more armoured vehicles, trucks, and articulated lorries, and a number of vehicles I couldn’t identify, but which looked extremely impressive. Most trucks were towing trailers or bowsers, presumably containing fuel or water.
The convoy looked huge and stretched far away into the distance.
Turning to Prince Harry, I said, “There’s got to be more than two hundred people here.”
“I know it looks that way, but we have a lot of equipment to use and we weren’t sure what we would need, so we decided to bring a bit of everything. Probably overkill, but this is the army and there’s no such thing as too much kit. We had it and we had to bring it. We probably all got carried away because, for once, there was no one to remind us about budgets and costs. Boys and their toys and all that!”
I just laughed and shook my head at the ever growing procession of vehicles coming in to view.
By now the lead vehicles had reached us. Harry spoke into his radio to remind his men to keep their eyes pointing outwards for any potential threat.
Silence descended over the road, as one by one, the vehicles stopped and shut off their engines.
The silence was palpable. In the city, we’d been used to the constant noises that bombarded us every day. After the event, the silence had seemed strange and had taken time to get used to. Now the noise of all those vehicles sounded just as alien, and the silence when the engines went quiet felt normal, better.
People started to step out from the vehicles.
“Jon!” shouted Jerry. To the amusement of those around him he ran forward and threw his arms around his brother. Once he had disentangled himself from his brother’s embrace, Colonel Moore walked over, hugged Fiona, Larry and Jack, and asked to be introduced to the rest of us.
I was tempted to carry on the hugging tradition, but decided on a hand shake instead.
The introductions were a blur: Captain this, Lieutenant that. It was fortunate that they were all wearing name tags because I had no idea how to tell the ranks from their lapel badges or shoulder thingies.
I knew I’d have to learn quickly or I might start upsetting people.
“Right,” said Jon briskly, “first things first. Peter, Allan and Tom, we need to discuss security. Everyone needs to be clear on what they’re doing. We can’t afford any confusion or unfortunate mishaps, so I suggest a quick planning meeting between my lot and yours. Bring anyone along you feel is relevant. We’ll let our people mingle for a while, but please keep an eye on the young ones. I’d hate them to touch something they shouldn’t and get hurt.”
We adjourned to Pete’s house where his dining room had been turned into his office. On the wall were large-scale maps of the area with key points marked on them. There was also a well drafted drawing of our current set-up on the road, with all the occupied houses marked, (including details of all the occupants), and showing the locations of all our defensive points.
The visitors admired them before we got down to business. We began by explaining our current procedure.
We’d already provided details during our previous radio conversations, so most had heard it all before, but for clarity we ran through it all again. Our scavenging procedures were also discussed. Although we all knew the men and women who would be coming and going, a soldier on guard duty wouldn’t know if the armed people heading towards him (or her) were friendly or not.
One or two of the officers started to tell us what we should or shouldn’t be doing, and what was acceptable. Before any of us could react, Jon interrupted them and apologised, saying,
“Please, gents. We’re the guests here. This is not a base, where what we say goes. Our procedures will have to fit around theirs, not the other way round. Like it or not, I think we can learn a lot from these people. They’ve all survived without the benefits of warehouses full of kit, and have adapted well to the situation we are all in. No matter what you think,” he continued, seriously, “I doubt if any of us could have done a better job.”
To be fair, they all conceded the point and apologised and the meeting continued. Initially it was agreed that a soldier would accompany every individual who was on guard or patrol duty. We hadn’t planned any scavenging trips for a day or two, so we decided to discuss that later.
We told them that we’d prepared some houses just outside the perimeter for them to use and had put basic security measures in place. They were overjoyed about this, and confessed that no matter what way you looked at it, sleeping under canvas in winter was something to be endured if necessary, and avoided if at all possible.
One of the officers went to check out the houses and quickly returned to confirm that they were ideal. With a few more cots in each room everybody could easily be accommodated.
They planned to set up a security perimeter around their vehicles, which would meet with our perimeter at the barricade of cars.
They would assume the responsibility for patrolling that perimeter, and the barricade would be opened to allow easier access between the two. We agreed that at least initially, a
nyone entering the road where the vehicles were parked should be accompanied by a uniformed member of the expedition. That way they could easily be identified as legitimate and not some outsider sneaking in.
It all made sense, but I was conscious that there were a lot of people outside, including my own family, who all had a right to be involved.
And it was Christmas Day.
“Gentleman and ladies,” I interrupted everyone, “could I request that we adjourn this discussion? Unless anyone thinks differently, I believe we’ve covered all the important stuff for now. Some of us have been busy cooking you all a welcome meal, and I don’t have to remind you it is Christmas Day, and the only duties we have today are guard duty. So whoever is in charge of allocating duties to your personnel, have a chat with Pete here and get it sorted. I’m going to spend the rest of the day with my family and friends, and I’m including all our new arrivals, when I say friends.”
Colonel Moore stood and smiled, “Well said, Tom. Our cooks have been planning something similar, so let’s go outside and meet everyone else. Can I suggest we all try and restrain ourselves and leave all the questions we have until tomorrow? As Tom rightly says, it is Christmas Day and I don’t think Santa has been here properly yet.”
The atmosphere on the road was great. The sun was out and temperatures were mild for the time of year. Everyone seemed to be getting on well, and the road was noisy with the sound of people chatting and laughing. Colonel Moore and Pete went to sort out the guard routine, prior to briefing the residents and soldiers who were due to be on guard duty. In the meantime, Allan and Harry updated the rest of the road’s occupants on the plans we had made.
The plans had been hastily drawn up and would need improving, but given what we already had in place and the fact that Jon’s engineers were already quickly surrounding their perimeter with coils of razor wire, I told myself I could afford to relax.
Jon (as he had virtually ordered me to call him) confirmed that their base would continue to provide UAV coverage and would provide advanced warning of anybody approaching.