A ROUND THIS TIME, just before the wedding, or perhaps just after, I went off with Willy to train with the British Special Boat Service. It wasn’t official training. Just a bit of boys and toys, as we called it. Mostly a lark, though it did
grow out of long-standing and solemn tradition.
Our family had always maintained close ties with the British military. Sometimes that meant an official visit, sometimes a casual lunch. Sometimes it meant a private chat with men and women home from the wars. But sometimes it meant taking part in rigorous exercises. Nothing showed respect for the military like doing, or trying to do, what they did.
Such exercises were always kept secret from the press. The military preferred it that way, and God knows the royals did too.
It was Mummy who took Willy and me on our first military exercise—a “killing house” in Herefordshire. The three of us were put into a room, told not to move. Then the room went dark. A squad kicked down the door. They threw flash bangs, scared the devil out of us, which was their aim. They wanted to teach us how to respond “if ever” our lives were in danger.
If ever? That made us laugh. Have you seen our mail?
But this day with Willy was different. Much more physical, more participatory. Less about teaching, more about adrenaline. We raced across Poole Harbour on
speedboats, “attacked” a frigate, clambered up its cable ladders while shooting 9-mm MP5s loaded with paintball rounds. In one exercise we scurried down a flight of metal stairs into the frigate’s hold. Someone cut the lights, to make it more interesting, I suppose. In the pitch-dark, four steps from the bottom, I fell, landed on my left knee, which was immediately impaled on a fixed bolt sticking out of the floor.
Blinding pain washed over me.
I managed to get up, keep going, finish the drill. But at the end of the exercise we jumped off the boat’s helipad, into the water, and I found my knee wasn’t working. My whole leg wasn’t working. When I got out of the water and stripped off the dry suit, Willy looked down and turned pale.
My knee was gushing blood. Paramedics were there within minutes.
The Palace announced some weeks later that my entry into the Army would be postponed. Indefinitely.
Reporters demanded to know why.
The Palace comms team told them: Prince Harry has injured his knee playing rugby.
Reading the papers, my leg iced and elevated, I threw back my head and laughed. I couldn’t help savoring one small particle of self-indulgent glee as the papers, for once, unwittingly printed a lie about me.
They soon got their revenge, however. They began pushing a story that I was afraid to go into the Army, that I was bunking off, using a fake knee injury as a way of stalling.
I was, they said, a coward.
