by Penny Junor
Harry’s pre-deployment training had been very intense. “The big issue is about restraint,” says Tom de la Rue. “Engagement is the last resort and pre-deployment is all about judgmental training. Week after week after week we put our Apache crews through various demanding exercise scenarios until they are absolutely 100 percent confident that in any circumstance they will come to the correct judgment.
“There are broadly two aspects to what we do. There is deterrence, which works tremendously well. [For example]: there is an engagement happening on the ground, the patrol is being contacted in the Helmand River valley and they need Apache support. The Apaches come into the overhead and the patrol is able to withdraw because the Taliban melts away—that’s deterrence. We know anecdotally that these insurgents really do quite revere the Apache capability. They call us mosquitoes because we’re everywhere, and have the ability to attack them even at ranges where they can’t see or hear us. This interesting dynamic plays deep into the psyche of the insurgents. The Apache is a formidable aircraft and it certainly does deter the enemy. The other very important aspect of our focus is saving life. What I say to my crews is, ‘Listen, you are not here to win the campaign outright, you are a squadron of Apaches delivering a single capability as part of a widespread counter-insurgency campaign. You are not politicians, so you don’t make a decision about whether you should be here or not. Essentially, all I am asking you to do is to boil your job down to two things: deterrence—and if deterrence doesn’t work, then save coalition lives by attacking and defeating the enemy wherever he presents himself as a legitimate and justifiable target.’ If that’s the mind-set they launch with, then they are in a very good place.
“But before firing a single weapon the crews have to ask themselves three vital questions—Can I? Should I? Must I? The answers will give the Apache crews their rough engagement parameters.”
“The British Army is absolutely scrupulous about rules of engagement and whether or not it is legal to engage the enemy,” says David Meyer. “One of the things with the Apache is you can record what people are doing, what is being said in the cockpit and any engagement, however small, however long, is scrutinized to see that it is fair, legal, proportional, etc. The understanding of that is drilled in at the very, very beginning. This is not a game; this is really important stuff and you are legally responsible for your actions. You’ve got incredibly destructive power at your fingertips; you can’t just use it willy-nilly.”
On his first deployment, as a JTAC, Harry had been in the middle of nowhere, as close to the front line as it was possible to be, in an American patrol-based unit, away from the media and even away from his close protection, just concentrating on his job. He loved it and still has friends among a unit of Gurkhas he came across. Camp Bastion, where he was based the second time around, for the full four and a half months, was a very different experience. Bastion was roughly the size of Reading and temporary home to 30,000 to 40,000 soldiers as well as locally employed civilians of every nationality. It was a sprawling, ugly, utilitarian mass of military humanity, blast walls, razor wire, tents and converted shipping containers in the middle of the desert in Helmand Province, with a constant turnaround of military personnel.
The runway, the aircraft, the ops rooms and everything else used by the Joint Aviation Group, of which Harry and his squadron were a part, was in a separate area within the compound, fenced off from the rest; and only those who worked there were admitted. There were about 550 people in all from the three services and, within that area, everyone was used to seeing Captain Wales; to them he was just another Army officer doing his job. But when he left that area to go to his accommodation, to the NAAFI, the gym, or the cookhouse, where several thousand people would be eating at any one sitting, he was suddenly Prince Harry and an object of curiosity, which he hated. “There’s this slightly uneasy dislocation at times where one minute you’re having to do what the aircraft is designed for,” says Tom, “and the next minute you’re in this big central cookhouse; you’re getting two worlds merged together; whereas in the patrol-based locations you have none of that—there’s no media, there are no other units gawping at you, you’re simply getting on with your job.”
The crews worked through a cycle, switching between very high readiness (VHR) days, when they would hang out in the VHR tent—making brews, watching videos, playing computer games—waiting for the phone to ring, when they would run to the aircraft and could be airborne in six and a half to seven minutes; and deliberate operations days, which were less stressful. Those could be spent on deliberate flying operations, or providing cover for troop movements.
“There’s a lot of sitting around doing nothing,” says David Meyer, “and then suddenly you’re thrown right into the thick of it in what can be very trying circumstances. There’s a very strong bond between the aviation community—be they Chinook, Apache or Lynx pilots—because it’s been formed in adversity. If the Chinook crews can’t trust the Apache crews to ensure that they’re safe, that they’re providing protection when those crews are on the ground, then that whole thing will break down. It comes back to making the right decision under pressure, often at night in what can be difficult weather and difficult flying conditions, whilst on the radio you’re hearing there’s a British soldier who’s lost two legs or something. So the pressure comes on like that and you’ve got to react and make the right decisions. You could be drinking a cup of coffee; five minutes later you could be in your aircraft, ten minutes later you could be over a very tricky situation unfolding on the ground and you could be there for two and a bit hours and then you come back and it’s like, ‘Well, what on earth was all that about?’ And then you hear that a British soldier has died. So it’s a very difficult environment to operate in.”
What had so convinced David that Harry was right for the job was his ability to make decisions. “Make a decision right or wrong, but make a decision. You’d have a scenario in Afghanistan with troops on the ground in contact with the Taliban, in either mortal danger or need of assistance and the last thing you want is somebody to arrive in an Apache—who can make a significant difference to what’s going on on the ground—to dither around. You want someone who’s going to come in there, read the situation on the ground very quickly, understand what’s going on and understand what they can do to effect the right outcome, either in getting the troops out of danger or getting a Chinook helicopter in to pick up an injured soldier or something of that nature. He’s got to make all those right decisions and operate a very complex machine as well.”
The public didn’t know about Harry’s deployment until he came back at the end of January 2013, when several interviews he had given during the four months were released along with a full-length documentary. The cameras showed him at work and at play—at Christmas, wearing a Santa hat with pigtails; fixing himself Weetabix for breakfast, just feet from his unmade bed; playing uckers (a board game traditionally played in the Navy—” the loser becomes the brew-bitch for the day”) and trashing his mates at the video game FIFA. He was a lad among lads. And they showed him on call, discussing the more serious aspects of the job—and, in one of the most dramatic pieces of television, in mid-sentence he realized there was an emergency going on behind him, ripped the microphone from his shirt and ran off to his aircraft. He wasn’t enjoying Bastion. “My choice would have been back out on the ground with my regiment,” he said. “That sounds quite spoilt when I’m standing in front of this thing—£45 million worth—but I think hopefully my friends and family back home know exactly what I’m talking about. I’d much rather be out with the lads in a PB (patrol base). The last job was, for me personally, better. It’s a pain in the arse being stuck in Bastion. I go into the cookhouse and everyone has a good old gawp, and that’s one thing that I dislike about being here.”
He talked about the aircraft and about flying it and the sort of work they did. “There’s a lot of pressures, obviously, when we go and support the Americans or when we’r
e escorting the Tricky [mobile hospital]… but essentially I think it’s less stressful being up here than it is down there. We don’t have to put on all the kit and walk around through the desert, sweating our balls off.” And when goaded about whether he had killed anyone, he said, “Yeah, so lots of people have. The squadron’s been out here. Everyone’s fired a certain amount.”
How did he feel knowing that when he fired the aircraft’s weapons, that job was essentially killing the enemy? “Take a life to save a life,” he said; “that’s what we revolve around, I suppose. If there’s people doing bad stuff to our guys, we’ll take them out of the game. It’s not the reason I decided to do this job; I did it to get back out here and carry on with a job.” As for his skill as a gunner, he said, “It’s a joy for me because I’m one of those people who loves playing PlayStation and Xbox, so with my thumbs I like to think that I’m probably quite useful.”
The condemnation was instant. “I’VE KILLED TALIBAN” was a typical tabloid headline, while all the newspapers berated him for casually comparing battle to playing a computer game. Harry had also taken the opportunity to say exactly what he felt about the media.
It wasn’t quite the triumphant homecoming it should have been but, as Paddy Harverson says, “It was just him being true to himself. He’s not a politician, he doesn’t think, Oh, I can’t say that or I’d better say that, or I’ll dodge that question.”
“I don’t believe there is any such a thing as private life any more,” said Harry. “I’m not going to sit here and whinge. Everybody knows about Twitter and the Internet and stuff like that. Every single mobile phone has got a camera on it now. You can’t move an inch without someone judging you, and I suppose that’s just the way life goes.” He said his father was always telling him not to read the newspapers, but, “Of course I read it. If there’s a story and something’s been written about me I want to know what’s being said, but all it does is just upset me and anger me that people can get away with writing the stuff they do. Not just about me, but about everything and everybody.”
He scathingly referred to a typical example, when asked about Kate’s pregnancy. “Obviously I’m thrilled for both of them,” he said. “It’s about time. I can’t wait to be an uncle… I had a chat to them. I didn’t send a letter of congratulation like most of the papers said.” Kate had been forced to announce that she was pregnant in December, earlier than she would have chosen because she was admitted to hospital with severe morning sickness. The Sun had run a front-page story that Harry had sent her a letter of congratulations from Bastion. “It was just made up,” says Paddy. “The Sun came to us and said, ‘We have this story, is it okay to run it?’ You know when they don’t know; they want to take the story forward so they just make it up. How could they ever know that? It’s indicative of how the media treats not just the royals but celebrities. It’s creative journalism gone mad. They’ll give you a wink and say they’re in the entertainment business, but these are these people’s lives.”
“People who know him can all understand why he was critical of the press and it sums up his character,” says his friend Damian West. “ ‘It’s true, it’s what I think and I’m not scared to express my opinion, I’m not scared of confrontation’ [is what he might say]. Sometimes it has to be reined in for obvious reasons, but if he feels something or someone is being mishandled or misjudged he will try to rectify it. I remember when a group of friends were staying the weekend somewhere and were returning back to the house after a long afternoon walk, a member of the domestic staff said, ‘Just leave all your kit here,’ and so we left our kit there and went and had tea. Harry then came in and said, ‘What the hell do you think you are all doing? Take that stuff and put it in the right place.’ Very strict on, ‘You don’t have someone else tidying up after you.’ He feels very strongly about that, about how people are treated in every walk of life and at every level. He would never ask anybody to do something he would not do himself. He’s the last person to take a seat in a room. He’s very sensitive to people and the difference between right and wrong. What is right should be done. It’s a real driver for him.”
As for the suggestion that being good at computer games was handy in an Apache, “What he meant by that unfortunate turn of phrase, the Game Boy analogy,” says a senior aide, “is that the bloke in the front of the aircraft has got to be of the generation that’s able to do thirty-five different functions at once. It’s exactly the right analogy. You need five hands and you need your eyes going in different directions and you’re controlling three weapons systems for the aircraft. I think you can acquire thirty-six targets at once, which you have to prioritize—which are the threats, which aren’t; you’ve got to tell the pilot in the back to maneuver it this way or that and then you’ve got to identify the target and then do the radio transmissions back to base to get permission to engage and you’re talking to the air people and the guys on the ground. It’s a nightmare; that’s why it is the key role.
“He was a soldier speaking as a soldier on operations. You can’t expect the guy to possibly engage the enemy and not speak as a soldier. The plain fact is unless you are in the logistics chain on operations, to a greater or lesser degree you are going to be there to potentially inflict lethal force, whether you’ve got a rifle in your hands, or whether, as the last time, you’re there to talk in U.S. air power, fast air on to targets. It’s what they are about. What weapons you are carrying or operating at the time, philosophically is almost irrelevant. It’s a degree of firepower we are talking about.
“Dare I say it, it does no harm for someone with his profile, who’s right in among it, to say, ‘Guys and girls, this is what it’s about. It’s statistics on the news, but actually this is what we’re doing here.’ People are going to be nasty and accusatory, but your intelligent Sun reader is going to win through; he’s going to say, ‘Hang on—what did we expect him to do?’ And it hasn’t done any damage to his reputation in credibility terms. Ever since those interviews, you don’t hear that it’s all a con, that he’s being protected by the SAS when he’s out there. You don’t hear any of that anymore.
“Essentially, the whole point about taking life is not something that British soldiers talk about a great deal, I don’t suppose any soldiers do, but it’s something, in the final analysis, you are paid to do. You do it to help other people who can’t look after themselves, who are exposed. I know that’s his view. I’m not saying every soldier, including Harry, go out there with some great geopolitical mission statement imprinted on their brain, that they are there to preserve the democracy of Afghanistan; I think it’s more localized and personal. It’s enabling little girls to go to school, it’s making sure some Afghan policeman who’s the pillar of the community is not topped by the Taliban. It’s the personal in the end that is the motivator.”
Harry spoke to Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton when he came back, a couple of times at length. “I’ve always heard, ‘Oh he flies his helicopter frightfully well,’ but what came out of these, listening to him talk about the operations he’d been on, not in a showy-offy way but literally downloading, it came across in spades that this guy is a very professional operator. His maintenance of standards and his fury if he felt that he had dropped below at any point, the fact that he had rehearsed and rehearsed and trained and trained to overcome things; and he would not look lightly on other people’s standards dropping either. He’s a really professional soldier. They’re all good guys but you don’t see that sort of vehemence that often and it impressed me.”
Tom de la Rue, who was with Harry in Afghanistan, is not alone in believing that that second tour of duty was a defining moment in his life. “I think his training for the operational tour and then the tour itself really changed him as a professional officer. He suddenly became very wise overnight—not that he wasn’t before, but if you’re put in a situation where you’re in charge of a capability like that, you’ve got to be extremely professional, and you’ve got to get it right every time.
Being granted authority to fight in the British Army’s most formidable attack capability comes with huge responsibility… Getting it wrong could have devastating consequences. It doesn’t get any more serious than that.
“When he came back in January he was quite different—all for the better. Much more mature… But equally I would say that every single officer or senior NCO who has gone through this process has experienced exactly the same thing. They all—to a man or woman—come back from their first operational tour as a changed person because of the unique experience they have just had.
“These guys are just so full of confidence and anything that they thought they were lacking previously… the cobwebs are blown out and they come back really feeling they are on top of their job. In this case he really did pull it out of the bag and consequently came back a completely different person.
“I’m tremendously proud of his achievement but I’m not entirely sure it’s been captured in its fullest sense; the difficulty, the complexity, the level of achievement that he’s had to reach is just extraordinary and the fact that he deployed to an operational theater, and was able to act as a co-pilot gunner in a counter-insurgency campaign that has all sorts of nuances attached to it is remarkable. It’s never black and white, everything is always gray, and the fact that he did that absolutely with faultless distinction is something that I hope is remembered about him for a very, very long time. He did a tremendous job out there for Queen and country.”
“Las Vegas was before he went to Afghanistan,” says Sir David Manning. “I think there are phases in life and sowing his oats and being a bit of a wild boy was okay, but I think that’s over. We have to assume he’s moving into a different phase and I do see Afghanistan as a real watershed.”
