IT was 3am when a drunk – and punchy – Harry stumbled out of Mayfair club
Pangaea.
His royal protection officers were waiting. They had seen it all before.
They bundled their royal “principal” into a waiting car, intending to spirit
him away from the swarming paparazzi.
But the 20-year-old prince had other ideas.
Despite his aides’ best efforts, Harry leapt straight out of the vehicle,
wildly lashing out at one of the photographers.
His team managed to drag him off and get the swearing, bleary-eyed Harry back
into the car.
But this incident was far from a one-off.
Rumours of drug-taking, wild parties and numerous girls meant that in those
days Harry was hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Falling out
of nightclubs, fighting in the street and too many empty vodka bottles had
earned him the nickname “Party Prince”.
And ten years ago, he wasn’t doing much to dispel that party-animal image.
Harry had entered his teens with the benefit of enormous public sympathy.
The terrible loss of his mother at such a young age brought tidal waves of
compassion his way.
Most people also understood the difficulties he and William now faced, growing
up less shielded from the royal spotlight.
But as his third decade began, few disagreed that Harry’s private life was
spiralling out of control.
Harry was in his late teens when he had started having wild nights out in
Gloucestershire pubs around Highgrove — Prince Charles’s country home. One
pub in particular, the Rattlebone Inn, which has since changed hands, was
infamous for its boozy lock-ins.
Some of his drunken nights would end with illegal drug-taking at after-hours
parties back at the estate.
Team H — Harry’s posh group of friends — set up a nightclub in the basement of
Highgrove.
And it was his “court jester” pal, Guy Pelly, who took the blame for
introducing Harry to smoking pot.
When a shocked Prince Charles found out what was going on, he sent Harry to
visit a detox centre for recovering addicts to hammer home the dangers of
drug abuse.
But the parties continued. And then along came the
most infamous episode of all — “Harry the Nazi”.
The fancy-dress theme was “native and colonial”. William had come dressed as a
lion, Guy Pelly as the Queen. So far, so playful.
But 20-year-old Harry went one step further. He hired a Nazi uniform complete
with swastika armband and went to the party as a member of Rommel’s
notorious Afrika Korps.
Days later, The Sun published a picture of the swaggering prince in his
combat gear, drink in one hand, fag in another. It caused a sensation.
The world was outraged.
How could a royal, just two generations down from those who had lived through
the Blitz and the Holocaust, be so crass?
It prompted a chastened Harry to issue a very public apology.
Yet, as ever, his family rallied round him.
Some would say the turning point for the young prince came when Harry joined
the Army.
Unlike William, he had decided that university was not for him. From
childhood, all he had ever wanted was to be a soldier.
In May 2005 he enrolled at Sandhurst to start his military training.
He quickly excelled and no one was prouder than his
grandmother, who smiled at Harry as she inspected the troops at his
passing out ceremony in December the following year.
As a young officer in the Blues and Royals Household Cavalry, Harry longed to
see active service on the front line.
He knew his high profile would make things difficult and his presence would
put his squadron at greater risk, but he was determined to make the grade.
So when he learned that his regiment would go to Iraq in 2007 without him,
he seriously considered leaving the Forces.
Like certain other Windsors, Harry has a stubborn streak. And he was delighted
when the Queen later told him he could serve in Afghanistan the following
year.
He began working as a forward air controller, calling in air strikes on the
Taliban.
Harry relished “the chance to actually do the soldiering I wanted to do,
ever since I joined”.
But his first tour was cut short after an Australian weekly women’s magazine
broke a media blackout about his deployment on the front line.
Rather than never fight in the front line again, Harry retrained as an Apache
helicopter pilot.
He
returned to Afghanistan in 2012, which those closest to him say was the
making of the man.
Talking about the enemy, Harry said: “If there’s people trying to do bad stuff
to our guys, then we’ll take them out of the game, I suppose. Take a life to
save a life.
“Everyone’s fired a certain amount.”
His commanding officer, Lt Col Tom de la Rue, who served with Harry in
Afghanistan, has nothing but praise for him. He said: “The thing that really
stands out most about Harry is his amazing personal touch.
“He is completely genuine, he knows what makes people tick and he’s got huge
empathy.
“I am tremendously proud of his achievement, but I’m not entirely sure that
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.
“The fact that he deployed to an operational theatre and was able to act as a
co-pilot gunner in a counter-insurgency campaign is remarkable.
“That kind of campaign is never black and white, everything is always grey and
he did that faultlessly and with distinction.
“I hope that is remembered about him for a very, very long time. He was happy
to just get on with the job with no intrusion. “There is always
speculation that Harry was treated differently. I trained him. I deployed
him. And I can tell you he genuinely wasn’t.”
The other constant throughout Harry’s turbulent twenties was his rocky
six-year romance with Zimbabwean Chelsy Davy.
Chelsy was his first true love and they enjoyed romantic holidays together
sailing down the Delta in Botswana and on safari.
But headstrong Chelsy was not about to sacrifice her ambitions to be a
princess-in-waiting. She studied at Leeds University then landed a job at a
top law firm.
The signs were clear. Harry was proud of her achievements, but Chelsy was
determined to forge her own path. And in May 2010, she did just that.
She and Harry remain close friends since the split, but Chelsy has moved on,
most recently dating society jeweller Charles Goode, with rumours of an
engagement growing by the day. Other flames have flickered for the prince
since Chelsy. The Sun told of his brief liaisons with posh lingerie model
Florence Brudenell-Bruce and most recently, Cressida Bonas.
Apart from Chelsy, aristocratic Cressie — who was introduced to Harry by
Princess Eugenie — is the only other serious girlfriend Harry has had.
She had not been very impressed with his wild antics in Las Vegas, early on in
their relationship, when he played strip billiards at a party — pictures
of him naked made front page news in August 2012.
But they stayed together for two years, until April this year.
Just days before she was due to fly to America to be Harry’s guest at his best
friend Guy Pelly’s wedding to hotel heiress Lizzy Wilson, Cressida ended
things.
Harry was back at square one.
Now he enters his thirties young, free and single. Harry is far more
responsible, certainly.
But no doubt wondering who will be willing to share the life of incredible
privilege — and intense scrutiny — that he was born into.
Day I high-fived my hero, Harry
HARRY’S dream of staging an international games for wounded
soldiers became reality this week.
More than 400 injured servicemen and women from around the world competed in
the Invictus Games in London, which ends tomorrow.
The prince had seen the US Warrior Games, a paralympics for former troops, and
was inspired to put on a bigger and better version in London.
L/Cpl Maurillia Simpson, 39, a veteran of four tours to Iraq, competed in
sitting volleyball at the 2013 Warrior Games in Colorado Springs.
The East Londoner was invalided out of the Army after her left leg was smashed
when she was hit by a car in Germany in 2010 as she trained for a mission in
Afghanistan.
Talking of how she got to high-five Harry at the Warrior Games, below,
Maurillia said: “When Prince Harry arrived at our sitting volleyball
practice we moved up to make space for him. I looked at Harry and said,
‘Boss, don’t you dare come and sit next to me!’
“He laughed and said, ‘Maurillia, I’m coming to sit right beside you’.
“It was phenomenal just to have him share what we have gone through. For him
to say, ‘I want to be part of this. We’re in this thing together’.
“He believes passionately in helping wounded servicemen and women. He always
puts injured and sick soldiers to the forefront to remind people that our
lives have not just come to an end because we’re wounded.
“He knows our lives have just started and we need support. He is part of our
support network. He takes the time to get to know what you are going
through. Your dark days, your dark moments, your happy times, your
not-so-happy times.
“To have someone like Prince Harry understand that is half the battle.”