When the news broke, Harry was in a remote base near the front line in Afghanistan, and he had to be helicoptered straight out and back to the main British base in the country, where he was put on an aeroplane for Britain, landing at RAF Brize Norton that night. Miguel Head had organised a small group of journalists to greet him.
‘He was very upset, actually,’ recounted Head. ‘He was really down. I wouldn’t describe him as angry – he’s far more mature than that and he understood why it had happened. He was just very sad about it. In that time, you develop such a close bond with your troop. And it’s a job that he evidently was very good at and passionate about. To suddenly have to cut it short, in the middle of a day as well … It was very sudden.’
Head was touched that Prince Charles and Prince William had both come out to the airfield too.
‘It was the first time I realised – that I saw with my own eyes –’ Head said, ‘the closeness of the relationship between the two brothers. Think about the mixed emotions Prince William would have had, because he wasn’t allowed … He never got to go. So he would have known how Prince Harry felt, and he was very protective of him.’
To the west of Oxford, RAF Brize Norton was the airfield to which many Afghanistan casualties were being repatriated, and Harry had shared an aircraft with three seriously wounded men being flown home, one of them still in a coma and clutching pathetically at the piece of shrapnel that the surgeons had removed from his head. The experience had clearly sobered the prince.
‘Those are the heroes, not me,’ he insisted, ‘the ones who have lost limbs and will never be able to live a normal life again.’
The prince was still wearing his combat gear, all covered in desert sand. As he sat down to talk to the press it was clear that he was exhausted. He had not washed for a day and a half and he was obviously very upset as he tried to absorb the reality that, yet again, something he really cared about had been torn from him.
Miguel Head and his media colleagues had carefully agreed a list of questions for the prince to answer on his return, but the interviewer had got only two or three questions into the list, when Prince William suddenly stood up at the back of the room. He had been seated behind Head, and as the ministry man turned to look, he saw the older prince making a cutting motion with his hand across his throat – saying, in effect, ‘This is over.’
‘It was simply a brother,’ explains Head today, ‘realising that at that point nothing was more important than his brother’s welfare – and none of the other agreements mattered … It says something about the closeness of the two brothers and their authenticity, as well. They will not fake who they are simply to play a game, or to go along with other people’s expectations. And they are perfectly courteous and loyal, and they will abide by agreements up to a point. But they will come to a point where they say, “Well, actually …”’
Miguel Head looked at Prince William, then he looked at the media folk he had assembled and with whom he had been negotiating for weeks.
‘And I think, I have a split-second choice here. Do I go with this very carefully calibrated agreement with the broadcasters and just say to Prince William, “No, I’m sorry – this has got to continue”?’
Or should he go along with Prince William, the future king whom he has never met before?
‘And then I looked at Prince Harry and thought, You’re exhausted. This is not the time or the place for you to be here doing an interview.’
So Head did something he had never done before – he turned to the media pack and just wound up the press conference. He flatly told them it was over.
‘Prince Harry looked at me,’ recalls Head. ‘I remember the relief on his face and he left the room.’
Then Miguel Head got screamed at – ‘I mean, literally screamed at’ – by the BBC producer who had been conducting the interview. But the prince had, in fact, given coherent and reasonably lengthy answers to the few questions that had been put to him. With the footage of Harry’s arrival, there was more than enough to put together a solid bulletin at the top of the news.
Embracing each other fondly, the two brothers walked off with their father into the night.
20
Fantasy of Salvation
‘Every year we get closer, and we’ve even resorted to hugging each other now after not seeing each other for long periods of time.’
(Prince Harry, January 2006)
During his 2004 gap year between school and Sandhurst, Harry had worked and played in several countries around the world, rather in the fashion that William had travelled four years before. The younger brother enjoyed memorable experiences in Australia, Botswana and Argentina (lots of polo) – but his greatest involvement came during the final two months he spent working in the landlocked southern African enclave of Lesotho.
It was late 2004. Harry was nineteen rising twenty that September, and he was immensely impressed by the kindly and bespectacled younger brother of Lesotho’s king, Prince Seeiso, thirty-eight – a ‘spare’ who had found a role for himself in charity work, particularly with disadvantaged and Aids-struck communities.
‘I met so many children,’ recalled Harry, ‘whose lives had been shattered following the death of their parents – they were so vulnerable and in need of care and attention.’
It
