Harry Read Free

– said that celebrity chef Jamie Oliver should be flown in to do for the troops what he was trying to do to improve British school meals.
    After sharing their curried-goat lunch – no silver salvers here, just disposable plates – Harry and Bill had their photograph taken together. It was a different story at Sandringham where the royals settled down to watch the Queen’s televised Christmas message at 3 p.m. as they do every year. Her Majestyhad chosen to highlight the needs of society’s vulnerable – ‘It is all too easy to turn a blind eye, to pass by on the other side and leave it to experts and professionals’ – the woman on the 42-inch plasma screen (one of Sandringham’s few concessions to modern technology) in front of them began. Towards the end of the speech, however, she had added some words that seemed aimed towards her absent grandson:
    And also today I want to draw attention to another group of people who deserve our thoughts this Christmas … those who have given their lives or who have been severely wounded while serving with the armed forces in Afghanistan … I pray that all of you who are missing those who are dear to you will find strength and comfort in your families and friends … Wherever these words find you, and in whatever circumstances, I want to wish you all a blessed Christmas.
    Although he found himself in dangerous and extremely uncomfortable circumstances, Harry is unlikely to have felt disappointed about missing out on the royals’ splendid occasion . He is as lukewarm as his mother about spending the holiday at the royal Norfolk estate: ‘Diana told me she absolutely loathed being at Sandringham for Christmas,’ said her friend ‘Kanga’ Tryon; ‘“So much stuff and nonsense,” she would say.’
    Certainly Harry’s surroundings would have sent shivers through those closeted in one of the grandest houses in the land he called home. In addition to the buildings once occupied by the Afghan theology students, additionalstone-floored quarters had been constructed with walls of earth-filled HESCO barriers, blast-proof wire cages filled with rubble and topped with corrugated iron and sandbags. Pear-sized stones were used to temper the ever-present desert dust but they proved to be of little use when the helicopters – like the one that had brought Harry in – descended. In one building where the brave Gurkhas (motto: ‘Better to die than be a coward’) slept, Harry was shown a hole in the ceiling where a Taliban missile had come through. ‘Thank God the Gurkhas were up on JTAC when it came in,’ says Connor.
    There was probably more shooting going on at Sandringham on Boxing Day than in and around FOB Delhi. Following a sumptuous breakfast the royal party ventured out on to the estate where the men shot pheasants and the women – including the Queen – picked up the dead birds. It was yet another wet day: ‘Bloody rain,’ Prince Philip was heard to grumble. They could have done with some of it in Helmand Province where the shortage of water was always a problem.
    Unlike most of the similar bases, FOB Delhi did have the luxury of running water, provided by a tapped well which somehow managed to feed rustic outdoor showers although, because the water was still frozen, use of it was forbidden before 11 a.m. each day. Harry was to admit later that he hadn’t had a shower for four days or washed his clothes (including his underpants, he pointed out) for a week. He never lost sight of the fact that his home was no longer a palace with servants attending to every whim. Lance-Corporal Frankie O’Leary, a 21-year-old from Lewisham in south London, recalls:

    He’s one of those officers you can talk to, he’s laid back and chilled out. Once a job needs doing he doesn’t shout and scream at you, he just asks you to do it. It just makes you want to work for the