After leaving Shawbury in October 2009, Harry moved to the Army Air Corps (AAC) base close to the Hampshire town of Middle Wallop to begin the eight-month first half of his required training course. There he had to pass his flying assessment in order to determine which of three different helicopters he should train to pilot: the multi-purpose Lynx, the five-seat Gazelle – both used for reconnaissance purposes – or the ultimate ‘war machine’, the Apache, very much an attack aircraft. He says now that he had never been more focused: he desperately wanted to be at the controls of an Apache, not only the most sophisticated of the three but the one that would assure his return to front-line service since the army had already decided that it was no longer safe for him to be on the ground. Harry revealed later that his preference was to serve with his men as regular infantry, but at least now he had an ambition that he could fulfil, providing he passed the rigorous training process.
So dedicated was he to his new role and the prospect it offered of him returning to war that Harry’s twenty-fifth birthday passed uncelebrated: in no way was he going to disobey his unit’s ten-hour ‘throttle to bottle’ rule preventing pilots from drinking, despite the fact that this was the day on which he came into the first instalment of his multi-million pound inheritance from his mother’s estate – much of which had come from his father in the divorce settlement. The interest on his share alone gave him £300,000 a year ‘pocket money’, part of which he donated secretly to Sentebale. Another plus was that the Queen granted him and William their own royal household – one which would take precedence over even Prince Andrew’s. With offices in St James’s Palace it would take care of the young princes’ public, military and charitable activities. To the princes’ delight Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton – who had been their secretary since March 2005 – was put in charge. Lowther-Pinkerton, who had proved to be a good friend and wise mentor, was equally delighted; he enjoyed working with them. ‘Prince Harry has his moments,’ he said,
but even with old Harry and his wild moments, the guy’s instincts are absolutely 100 per cent brilliant… People used to say, ‘You really must find something for young Harry to do.’ Now they say, ‘God, you’ve got to find somewhere where the country can really capitalise on Harry,’ which is so great.
In her wisdom, Her Majesty appointed Sir David Manning, former British ambassador to the US, to oversee the whole operation and report to her if any matter needed superior attention. Sir David, she knew, would ensure that not a penny was wasted in the new household. Showing their trust in Manning, Harry and William also appointed him as a trustee of their Royal Foundation, a group charity they conceived in 2009 which took over the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund when it was wound up three years later. One of the foundation’s aims is to promote the welfare of those serving in the armed forces – a cause close to both princes’ hearts. Their support for various charities did not always require their participation as patrons. When Harry started wearing a Help for Heroes wristband, the cause’s takings soared.
Harry did well in his exams and was presented with his flying brevet (wings) by his father on 7 May 2010 at a ceremony at Middle Wallop, a ceremony during which he switched his Blues and Royals Officer’s Service Dress cap for that of the Army Air Corps’ sky blue beret with a Blues and Royals badge. But the big news of the day for Harry was that he had been selected by Army Air Corps commanders to train as an Apache pilot. Harry declared:
It is a huge honour to have a chance to train on the Apache, which is an awesome helicopter. There is still a huge mountain for me to climb if I am to pass the Apache training course. To be honest, I think it will be one of the biggest challenges in my life so far. I am very determined though, as I do not want to let down people who have shown faith in my ability to fly this aircraft on operations. It is a seriously daunting prospect, but I can’t wait.
In a far less formal note he wrote to a fellow soldier over there: ‘Afghanistan, here I come, better warn the Taliban.’
First, though, Africa once again beckoned. He and William set off for a six-day, three-country visit, their first official overseas tour together, in June 2010. They began in Botswana working for the charity Tusk Trust, of which William had been patron for five years despite never having had an opportunity to visit the country. His patronage of this particular charity had been Prince Charles’s idea since it taught thousands of children each year about the essential needs of conservation if the country was to survive. In the presence of supportive media, they witnessed and praised the work of four youngsters from the UK who were working on a Tusk project to turn a disused quarry into a nature reserve. Then, once the accompanying journalists had left, the princes sat down to an informal lunch with the volunteer workers, ‘keeping them in stitches of laughter’, says a royal retainer who was required to stay with the party.
For a short while the brothers split up: Harry couldn’t wait to get to his beloved Lesotho while William remained briefly for more formal activities. The reception Harry got was tremendous and he was delighted to see how the money Sentebale had already raised was being used to help AIDS orphans – a cause his mother championed despite the Queen’s view that it was not an appropriate one for a senior royal to be associated with. Many of the children he had talked to and played with on his earlier visit were delighted to see him. He had promised he would return and here he was. When he joined Harry in Lesotho, William was clearly impressed by the effect his brother was having on the country: everywhere they went Harry was hailed as a hero. It was Harry who had got Sentebale launched, despite William raising money for what was officially their joint charity and both having helped raise £300,000 for that and similar causes with an incredible endurance test (unpublicised) riding motorbikes 1,000 miles across the inhospitable terrain of South Africa’s Eastern Cape the previous year.
Their stay was concluded on a flat note when they watched a pathetic performance by England’s side in a football match in Cape Town. The England team could manage only a 0–0 draw against Algeria and were booed off the pitch. In the circumstances William was not keen to go to the players’ dressing room when the match ended but Harry persuaded him they should go down ‘to cheer the players up’. Although David Beckham did his best to receive the royal brothers gracefully, other players, including a frustrated Wayne Rooney who had had some unkind words to say to the booing fans before he left the pitch, were in no mood to be cheered up. When William tried to find something complimentary to say to the team, Harry, whose preference is for rugby anyway, interjected: ‘Oh, they’ll really enjoy being told how to play better by a posh soldier.’
Even if the footballers were not exactly hailed as heroes on their return to the UK, Harry and William received ample praise for their work with the poor and the sick during their brief African expedition. Just as all seemed well in his life, however, everyone was reminded of Harry’s past reputation as the bad boy of the Royal Family: a video diary filmed during his Sandhurst days emerged showing him describing a fellow officer as ‘our little Paki friend’ and later calling a colleague wearing a cloth on his head ‘a raghead’– typical soldier parlance, perhaps, but less palatable from the Queen’s grandson. Considering that he had put his past behind him and had just risked his life for his country he was somewhat disgusted when he had his knuckles rapped by the Prime Minister for the playful remarks (Cameron said the remark was ‘completely unacceptable’). ‘Actually Cameron was only teasing him,’ explains a senior Downing Street official. ‘He had to say something to him and it seems Harry took it the wrong way. The PM was very grateful to him for the work he had done in Afghanistan and I think the Prince now knows that.’
Harry’s initial annoyance over the PM’s reported comments came in a period when he was still angry about evidence given by Hasnat Khan at a belated inquest into Diana’s death. Despite, or perhaps because of, his intense dislike of Dodi Fayed, the Prince was shocked to learn that Khan had received many death threats during the courtship of his mother, which
had begun after she sent flowers to him at the hospital where he worked. Anonymous hate mail included cut-out photographs of the surgeon with a noose around his neck. Could this have been the work of a jealous rival? Harry, according to a source close to him, had his own theories.
In April 2011 he was promoted to captain within the Army Air Corps in recognition of time served in the armed forces. Captain Harry Wales was also awarded the trophy he had most wanted in his life: his Apache Badge. Now he could fly the lethal machine without an instructor and was ready for a further eight-month weapon course in order to become a fully operational Army Air Corps pilot. The ‘Apache Conversion to Type’ course would involve intense ground school training, day and night flying and intensive work on a simulator at RAF Wattisham in Suffolk. He and his fellow students would need to undertake fourteen-day flying sorties testing their ability to fly in cloud and congested airspace. Before progressing on to the night-time flying phase, however, Harry was tested using a cockpit blackout system known as ‘the Bag’, an exercise preparing him for flying on the night-vision system displaying thermal imagery into the helmet mounted display over his right eye.
Awesome stuff, but first he had a wedding to go to. As a clear signal of the growing admiration he had for his mentor Mark Dyer, before setting off for Wattisham the morning-suited Prince acted as an usher at the former royal equerry’s wedding to his Texan bride Amanda Kline in the Welsh town of Abergavenny. He had grown close to Dyer since the former Welsh Guards officer took him under his wing during the drugs scandal of 2002 and was greatly impressed by the way he handled the press invasion during his ‘virtual rehab’ gap-year sojourn in Australia. Clearly moved by the ceremony and, in jolly mood, he told one guest at the reception afterwards: ‘Gosh, this is so lovely it makes me want to get married too and have lots of kids.’
But as Chelsy, the only serious candidate to be his partner for life, might have thought of a boy with such a roving eye, the trouble was choosing a girl he could settle down with from the multitude of eager contenders waiting in the wings.
11
GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS
As Harry Wales discovered early in life, there are lots of advantages to being a royal, but there are disadvantages too. Many young sons of wealthy parents have all the material things their hearts desire – fabulous homes, luxurious holidays and servants to ensure their every need is taken care of. In Harry’s case there is an added bonus: there are few desirable women in the world who would not like to be a princess. He has had his choice of a multitude of such delectable females and quite a few of them, it has to be said, were the daughters of women who would give anything to be related by marriage to Her Majesty the Queen. But there was one big problem he had to face that would not trouble his contemporaries: how was he ever going to know if the girl he eventually chose would be the right one, marrying him for the right reason?
But Harry’s first love was not a girl chasing his fame and potential fortune. From the moment he set eyes on the beautiful Laura Gerard Leigh, a nice St Mary’s Calne girl, during his troubled time at Eton (where she was said to be a regular visitor) he fell head-over-heels in love. Prince Philip, wary of the dangers of Harry falling for a misfit, was particularly delighted when he learned of the budding romance between his grandson and the granddaughter of the close friend he called ‘G’ – Colonel William Gerard Leigh, who had served in the Life Guards throughout the Second World War and was a much respected figure in the polo world.
The Gerard Leighs’ close connections with the Royal Family promised a match made in heaven. Alas, much as she liked him, Laura was not as besotted with Harry as he was with her though she enjoyed his attention, his sense of humour and his gracious hospitality. On their many summer evenings out the pair talked endlessly about their mutual love of rugby (she attended the Six Nations tournament with him) and horses – especially polo horses. But, as he admitted later, his passion for the beautiful girl at his side was never fully reciprocated. Letters he wrote professing his love for her failed to receive the desired answers. Romantic Valentine cards from Harry were answered with jocular ones from Laura.
A contemporary at Eton says:
Harry was heartbroken. I believe he turned to drinking copious quantities of vodka at that time because of it. I was going through a similar experience myself so I knew how he felt. We both thought more about our loves than we did our suffering studies. Laura wasn’t interested in titles and prospects – her father was a multi-millionaire stockbroker so she didn’t have to care about money, just love, real love, and sadly, from what I witnessed, as much as she liked Harry she decided she wasn’t in love with him.
The match ended when both set off for their respective gap years. According to Harry he tried to keep the fire in his heart burning, but once they were apart there was little or no response from the girl he had fallen so deeply in love with.
And then along came Margaret – that’s her middle name, she declines to be identified any further – a totally different girl from Miss Gerard Leigh. Unlike the rich and often-spoiled women he met in nightclubs and parties, ‘Margaret’ was an ordinary girl he first glimpsed on a visit to her shop where he had called in to pick up groceries during his time at school.
He was very nice, very polite and at first I didn’t even recognise him. After we’d been chatting for a few minutes he asked me if I would join him for a drink later. I told him I had a boyfriend but he was very persuasive and I agreed to see him at a pub in a nearby town – another girl who worked with me whispered in my ear, ‘You know who that is, don’t you? It’s Prince William’s brother, it’s Prince Harry.’ I was stunned, the closest I had ever been to anyone famous was when Kenny Everett came to an event in our town and I plucked up the courage to ask him for an autograph.
I didn’t want to be seen with Harry by anyone who knew me or, more importantly, someone who would tell my boyfriend, so we met up in this pub and I had cider and he had a beer. He was really lovely although I don’t think he really knew how to [behave] with someone from the other side of the tracks; all his friends were upper class, privileged people. Also, I felt so guilty because I knew my boyfriend would have been very upset if he knew. We talked for more than an hour – he asked me about my job, whether I had any hobbies, and when I said I had to go because I needed to catch a certain bus, he asked me for my mobile number and I gave it to him; he didn’t offer me his but he did ask me not to talk to anybody from the newspapers about him and me which offended me a bit so half-jokingly I said to him, ‘OK, on condition you don’t talk to them about me,’ which made him laugh.
Anyway, he called me the next day and said he’d enjoyed my company and would like to see me again. We met on two further occasions and on the second he held my hand and kissed me and said he thought he was falling for me. I felt awful, I liked him a lot but I knew it wouldn’t come to anything and that I risked losing the boy I’d been courting for nearly two years. I was also embarrassed because there was a man who was obviously his minder hovering in the background.
Harry called me several times after that but I had to tell him I couldn’t see him again. He was pleading but I knew it was wrong. I could never be part of his world. I cried buckets after that last call but he never rang me again. He’d said he understood. I wrote it all down in my diary – including the cheeky remarks he made to me – but I destroyed the diary on the night before I married my boyfriend, a marriage which is very happy, I’m pleased to say, and we have two lovely children.
Margaret’s story says a great deal about Harry’s genuine compassion. The Prince that she encountered was not a royal playboy but a young man who would ultimately give his heart to whomever he was attracted to, regardless of their position or status in life. As Margaret herself sums up their brief romance:
I still think about Harry. He’s such a lovely man, a true gentleman. I never talked about it before except to a girlfriend who I know called you. Please don’t let anyone else contact me. It’s long been my se
cret and I guess his too. I’ve read all about his affairs – well, his girlfriends – in the papers and I hope he’s happy but none of them seem like the kind of girl I believe he needs. Glamour and nightclubs may sound very attractive but the Harry I knew, albeit briefly, needs real love and he doesn’t seem to have found it.
Prince Philip might well have approved of Margaret after his fears that Harry’s position in life might be used for all the wrong reasons were realised when a Hollywood publicist decided to link the Prince with a young starlet he was anxious to turn into an international celebrity. The girl was one Hilary Duff, an up-and-coming actress who had just appeared in Lizzie McGuire and also had high hopes of becoming a singing star. The hype merchant helping her on her way claimed that Harry had made a series of telephone calls to her and that the pair were ‘keen to meet up soon’. Duff herself said: ‘This is just like a fairy tale and he’s my Prince Charming.’ She even sent the bemused Prince an autographed poster for her movie, a film he had never seen since the picture was aimed at fourteen-year-old girls. The ambitious PR campaign bandied it about that Harry had initiated contact with Duff: ‘He pulled a few strings and was able to get his private telephone number to her. He was thrilled when she called him. They’ve just started talking on a regular basis. It’s a case of puppy love for both of them.’ Duff soon forgot Harry when she married the real man of her dreams, a professional hockey player called Mike Comrie.
Although there can never be a replacement for the first love in anyone’s life, he was to find brief consolation in the arms of two others: TV presenter Natalie Pinkham, a friend of his cousin Zara Phillips, and Beaufort polo club assistant Jo Davies. If there was one girl who certainly had nothing to gain from publicity linking her with Harry it was Pinkham, a talented broadcaster who fascinated him with her love of extreme sports like bungee jumping, canyoning, sky diving, paragliding, scuba diving and rock climbing. Similar to him, she was a keen supporter of good causes and received acclaim for walking on fire for the Motor Neurone Disease Association. But Pinkham announced that she was suing a newspaper (not The Sun, which had first printed it) for publishing a photograph of the Prince kissing her cheek and cupping her breast which had been taken three years earlier, alleging a current romance. Pinkham, who was introduced initially to Harry by her ex-boyfriend, former England rugby team captain Matt Dawson, claimed the picture was from her own private collection and represented ‘a flagrant breach of copyright’.
Harry Page 18
