BRITAIN’S MINISTRY OF DEFENCE told the world in February 2007 that I was deploying, that I would be commanding a group of light tanks
along the Iraqi border, near Basra. It was official. I was off to war.
Public reaction was peculiar. Half of Britons were furious, calling it dreadful to risk the life of the Queen’s youngest grandson. Spare or not, they said, it’s unwise to send a royal into a war zone. (It was the first time in twenty-five years that such a thing had been done.)
Half, however, said bravo. Why should Harry get special treatment? What a waste of taxpayers’ money it would be to train the boy as a soldier and then not to use him.
If he dies, he dies, they said.
The enemy certainly felt that way. By all means, said the insurgents, who were trying to foment a civil war across Iraq, send us the boy.
One of the insurgent leaders extended a formal invitation worthy of high tea.
“We are awaiting the arrival of the young handsome spoiled prince with bated breath…”
There was a plan for me, the insurgent leader said. They were going to kidnap me, then decide what to do with me—torture, ransom, kill.
In seeming direct contradiction of this plan, he concluded by promising that the handsome prince would return to his grandmother “without ears.”
I remember hearing that and feeling the tips of my ears grow warm. I flashed back to childhood, when a friend suggested my ears be surgically pinned back, to prevent or correct the family curse. I said, flatly, no.
Days later, another insurgent leader invoked my mother. He said that I should learn from her example, break away from my family. Rebel against the imperialists, Harry.
Or else, he warned, a prince’s “blood will flow into our desert.”
I would’ve worried about Chels hearing any of this, but since we’d begun dating she’d been so harassed by the press that she’d completely unplugged. The papers didn’t exist for her. The internet was off-limits.
The British military, however, was very plugged in. Two months after announcing my deployment, the head of the Army, General Dannatt, abruptly called it off. Besides the public threats from insurgent leaders, British intelligence learned that my photo had been distributed among a group of Iraqi snipers, with instructions that I was the “mother of all targets.” These snipers were elite: they’d recently cut down six British soldiers. So the mission had simply become too dangerous, for me, for anyone who might have the bad luck to be standing next to me. I’d become, in the assessment of Dannatt and others, a “bullet magnet.” And the reason, he said, was the press. In his public statement canceling my deployment, he blasted journalists for their overwrought coverage, their wild speculations, which had “exacerbated” the threat level.
Pa’s staff also issued a public statement, saying I was “very disappointed,” which was untrue. I was crushed. When word first reached me I was at Windsor Barracks, sitting with my guys. I took a moment to collect myself, then told them the bad news. Though we’d just spent months traveling, training together, during which we’d become brothers in arms, they were now on their own.
It wasn’t simply that I felt sorry for myself. I worried about my team. Someone else would have to do my job, and I’d have to live forever with the wondering, the guilt. What if they were no good?
The following week, several papers reported that I was in deep depression. One or two, however, reported that the abrupt about-face in my deployment had been my own doing. The coward story, again. They said that, behind the scenes, I’d pressed my superiors to pull the plug.
