MY ARMY SUPERIORS, LIKE PA, were nonplussed. They didn’t care about me playing billiards in the privacy of a hotel room, naked or not. My
status remained unchanged, they said. All systems go.
My fellow soldiers stood up for me too. Men and women in uniform, all around the world, posed naked, or nearly so, covering their privates with helmets, weapons, berets, and posted the photos online, in solidarity with Prince Harry.
As for Cress: After hearing my careful and abashed explanation, she came to the same conclusion. I’d been a dummy, not a debaucher.
I apologized for embarrassing her.
Best of all, none of my bodyguards were dismissed or even disciplined— mainly because I kept it a secret that they’d been with me at the time.
But the British papers, even knowing I was off to war, continued to vent and fume as if I’d committed a capital offense.
It was a good time to leave.
September 2012. The same eternal flight, but this time I wasn’t a stowaway. This time there was no hidden alcove, no secret bunkbeds. This time I was allowed to sit with all the other soldiers, to feel part of a team.
As we touched down at Camp Bastion, however, I realized I wasn’t quite one of the lads. Some looked nervous, their collars tighter, their Adam’s apples larger. I remembered that feeling, but for me this was coming home. After more than four years, and against all odds, I was finally back. As a Captain. (I’d been promoted since my first tour.)
My accommodation this time was better. In fact, compared to my last tour, it was Vegas-esque. Pilots were treated like—the word was unavoidable, everybody used it—royalty. Soft beds, clean rooms. More, the rooms were actual rooms, not trenches or tents. Each even had its own air-con unit.
We were given a week to learn our way around Bastion, and to recover from jet lag. Other Bastionites were helpful, more than happy to show us the ropes.
Captain Wales, this is where the latrines are!
Captain Wales, over here is where you’ll find hot pizza!
It felt a bit like a field trip, until, on the eve of my twenty-eighth birthday, I was sitting in my room, organizing my stuff, and sirens started going off. I opened my door, peered out. All down the hall other doors were flying open, other heads popping out.
Now both my bodyguards came running. (Unlike the last tour of duty, I had bodyguards this time, mainly because there was proper accommodation for them, and because they could blend in: I was living with thousands of others.) One said: We’re under attack!
We heard explosions in the distance, near the aircraft hangars. I started to run for my Apache but my bodyguards stopped me.
Way too dangerous.
We heard shouting outside. Make ready! MAKE READY!
We all got into body armor and stood in the doorway to await the next instructions. As I double-checked my vest and helmet one bodyguard kept up a constant patter: I knew this was going to happen, I just knew it, I told everyone, but no one would listen. Shut up, they said, but I told them, I told them, Harry’s going to get hurt! Fuck off, they said, and now here we are.
He was a Scot, with a thick burr, and often sounded like Sean Connery, which was charming under normal circumstances, but now he just sounded like Sean Connery having a panic attack. I cut off his long story about being an unappreciated Cassandra and told him to put a sock in it.
I felt naked. I had my 9-mm, but my SA80A was locked up. I had my bodyguards, but I needed my Apache. That was the only place I’d feel safe
—and useful. I needed to rain fire down on our attackers, whoever they were.
More explosions, louder explosions. The windows flickered. Now we saw flames. American Cobras came thumping overhead and the whole building shuddered. The Cobras fired. The Apaches fired. An awesome roar filled the room. We all felt dread, and adrenaline. But we Apache pilots were especially agitated, itching to get into our cockpits.
Someone reminded me that Bastion was about the size of Reading. How could we ever navigate our way from here to the helicopters without a map, while taking fire?
That was when we heard the all-clear.
The sirens stopped. The thump of rotors faded. Bastion was secure again.
But at a terrible price, we learned. Two American soldiers were killed.
Seventeen British and American soldiers were injured.
Throughout that day and the next we pieced together what happened. Taliban fighters had got hold of American uniforms, cut a hole in the fence, and slipped in.
They cut a hole in the fence? Yep.
Why?
In short, me.
They were looking for Prince Harry, they said.
The Taliban actually issued a statement: Prince Harry was our target.
And the date of the attack had been carefully chosen as well.
They’d timed it, they proclaimed, to coincide with my birthday. I didn’t know if I believed that.
I didn’t want to believe it.
But one thing was beyond dispute. The Taliban had learned about my presence on the base, and the granular details of my tour, through the nonstop coverage that week in the British press.
