I GOT UP EACH day, went to the base, did my work, enjoyed none of it. It felt pointless.
And boring. I was bored to tears.
More, for the first time in years, I was without a purpose. A goal. What’s next? I asked myself every night.
I begged my commanding officers to send me back.
Back where?
To the war.
Oh, they said, ha-ha, no.
In March 2013 word came down that the Palace wanted to send me on another royal tour. My first since the Caribbean. This time: America.
I was glad for the break in the monotony. On the other hand I was also worried about returning to the scene of the crime. I imagined days and days of questions about Vegas.
No, Palace courtiers assured me. Impossible. Time and the war had eclipsed Vegas. This was strictly a goodwill tour, to promote the rehabilitation of wounded British and American soldiers. No one is going to mention Vegas, sir. Cut to May 2013, me touring the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy, alongside New Jersey governor Chris Christie. The governor gifted me a blue fleece, which the press spun…as his way of keeping me clothed. Actually, Christie spun it that way too. A reporter asked him what he thought of my time in Las Vegas, and Christie vowed that if I spent the whole day with him, “nobody’s going to get naked.” The line got a big laugh, because Christie is famously stout.
Before Jersey I’d gone to Washington, D.C., met with President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, visited Arlington National Cemetery, laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I’d laid dozens of wreaths before, but the ritual was different in America. You didn’t place the wreath on the grave yourself; a white-gloved soldier placed it with you, and then you laid your hand singly, for one beat, upon the wreath. This extra step, this partnering with another living soldier, moved me. Holding my hand to the wreath for that extra second, I found myself a bit wobbly, my mind flooding with images of all the men and women with whom I’d served. I thought about death, injury, grief, from Helmand Province to Hurricane Sandy to the Alma tunnel, and I wondered how other people just got on with their lives, whereas I felt such doubt and confusion—and something else.
What? I wondered.
Sadness?
Numbness?
I couldn’t name it. And without being able to give it a name, I felt a kind of vertigo.
What was happening to me?
The whole American tour lasted only five days—a true whirlwind. So many sights, and faces, and remarkable moments. But on the flight home I was thinking about only one part.
A stop-off in Colorado. Something called the Warrior Games. A kind of Olympiad for wounded soldiers, with two hundred men and women taking part, each of whom inspired me.
I watched them closely, saw them having the time of their lives, saw them competing to the hilt, and I asked them…how?
Sport, they said. The most direct route to healing.
Most were natural athletes, and they told me these games had given them a rare chance to rediscover and express their physical talents, despite their wounds. As a result it made their wounds, both mental and physical, disappear. Maybe only for a moment, or a day, but that was enough. More than enough. Once you’ve made a wound disappear for any length of time, it’s no longer in control—you are.
Yes, I thought. I get that.
And so, on the flight back to Britain, I kept going over those games in my mind, wondering if we could do something similar in Britain. A version of those Warrior Games, but perhaps with more soldiers, more visibility, more benefits to participants. I scribbled some notes on a sheet of paper and by the time my plane touched down I had the essential idea sketched out.
A Paralympics for soldiers from all over the world! In London’s Olympic Park! Where the London Olympics had just happened!
With full support and cooperation from the Palace. Maybe?
Big ask. But I felt that I’d accrued some political capital. Despite Vegas, despite at least one article that made me out to be some kind of war criminal, despite my whole checkered history as the naughty one, Britons seemed to have a generally positive view of the Spare. There was a feeling
that I was coming into my own. Plus, most Brits had a positive view of the military community overall, despite the unpopularity of the war. Surely they’d be supportive of an effort to help soldiers and their families.
The first step would be pitching the Royal Foundation Board, which oversaw my charitable projects and Willy’s and Kate’s. It was our foundation, so I told myself: No problem.
Also, the calendar was on my side. This was early summer 2013. Willy and Kate, weeks from having their first child, were going to be out of commission for a while. The foundation therefore didn’t have any projects in the pipeline. Its roughly seven million pounds was just sitting there, doing nothing. And if these International Warrior Games worked, they’d enhance the foundation’s profile, which would energize donors and replenish the foundation’s accounts many times over. There’d be that much more to go around when Willy and Kate came back full-time. So I was feeling supremely confident in the days leading up to my pitch.
But when the actual day came, not so much. I realized how badly I wanted this, for the soldiers and their families, and if I’m being honest: for myself. And this sudden attack of nerves kept me from being at my best. Still, I got through it, and the board said yes.
Thrilled, I reached out to Willy, expecting him to be thrilled as well. He was sorely irritated. He wished I’d run all this by him first.
My assumption, I said, was that other people had done so.
He complained that I’d be using up all the funds in the Royal Foundation.
That’s absurd, I spluttered. I was told only a half-million-pound grant would be needed to get the games going, a fraction of the foundation’s money. Besides, it was coming from the Endeavour Fund, an arm of the foundation I’d created specifically for veterans’ recovery. The rest would come from donors and sponsors.
What was going on here? I wondered. Then I realized: My God, sibling rivalry.
I put a hand over my eyes. Had we not got past this yet? The whole Heir versus Spare thing? Wasn’t it a bit late in the day for that tired childhood
dynamic?
But even if it wasn’t, even if Willy insisted on being competitive, on turning our brotherhood into some kind of private Olympiad, hadn’t he built up an insurmountable lead? He was married, with a baby on the way, while I was eating takeaway alone over the sink.
Pa’s sink! I still lived with Pa! Game over, man. You win.
