Prince Harry: Frontline Afghanistan

Prince Harry - on duty,

in the Army, in Afghanistan.

As soon as we get a shout, whatever it is, we'll run to the aircraft,

at which point you have that taste of blood in your mouth.

This is Harry as we've rarely seen him before -

at war...

Take a life to save a life. That's what we revolve around, I suppose.

Go on, son.

..at work...

One of the fights I really enjoy is with PlayStation.

Whoever loses becomes the brew bitch

and then you have to make brews for everybody all day.

..and at his most candid.

Probably let myself down, I let my family down, let other people down.

It was probably a classic example

of me being too much Army and not enough Prince.

Over the last five months,

we were given remarkable access to the Prince...

This is my bed.

I don't really make it when I'm done here, which is a joy. That's it made.

..following his helicopter missions on the front line...

Make sure no missiles are unlatched,

because that's going to ruin your day.

..and living the day-to-day,

sometimes mundane reality of life inside Camp Bastion.

I'll show you the homely bit.

Friends and family send packages out.

Everyone seems to think I love Haribo. Unfortunately, I do.

Away from the paparazzi, from penthouse parties

and the royal duties he was born to carry out.

Tonight, we see Prince Harry as a soldier

serving Queen and country in Afghanistan.

Very easy to completely forget about who I am when I'm in the Army.

I am one of the guys. I don't get treated any differently.

This is Camp Bastion, the largest British military overseas base

built since the Second World War.

It stretches for 27 miles all around me.

It's about the size of Reading

and it's home to 30,000 people...

..including Prince Harry,

who is known around here simply as Captain Wales.

Welcome to our home. This is where my Army friends are.

They'll be known as Army Friend One, Two, Three.

They're not wearing their hats. They should be.

It's Christmas at Camp Bastion in southern Afghanistan

and Prince Harry is on duty.

Army Friend One, his mother needs to know that he's been smoking

while he's been out here.

Army Friend Two is a Tottenham Hotspur fan,

he's got a really horrible tattoo on his right arm

but he's pretty embarrassed about it.

These are not the surroundings you'd expect to see a prince in.

It's like Cribs.

But this has been home to Harry and these guys for the last five months.

He's the worst at FIFA, he's the second worst,

I'm second, and he's the best. I'm cool with that.

Whoever loses becomes the brew bitch

and then you have to make brews for everybody all day.

It is great being out here.

I'm with a great group of people.

It's away from all the media back home,

which is one of the real negative points about the UK, I suppose,

but you know, being out here is fantastic,

even when the weather's pants.

-Anything we crave?

-A minibar.

A minibar? Yeah, a minibar. A free minibar would be great.

Prince Harry arrived here last September on his tour of duty.

He's serving in the Army Air Corps in Helmand province,

one of the most dangerous regions in Afghanistan.

9,000 British troops are stationed here,

engaged in operations against the Taliban.

They're fighting a war that's been raging for more than a decade.

He's part of an elite squad

of pilots flying British Army attack helicopters.

This has been my office.

All my friends keep sending me pictures from London,

stuff like that, from the City, of their computer screens and phones

and it's just like, no, this is mine.

Obviously, I don't send them photos.

And Prince Harry's office is definitely more exciting.

As a recently qualified co-pilot gunner with 662 Squadron,

Harry operates one of these two-seater Apache helicopters,

considered to be one of the most lethal attack aircraft the Army possesses.

On standby in Camp Bastion,

he's always ready to get up in the sky at a moment's notice.

We all run to the aircraft,

at which point you have that taste of blood in your mouth.

Six-and-a-half, seven minutes,

I think, is the quickest we've got it going.

As soon as we get a shout, whatever it is,

we just try and do the best we can to get up there as quick as we can.

Once the engines start,

that's when my job starts to become a little bit rushed.

'You can't lift off until certain things are done in the aircraft.

'Sighting system up.

'Fuel, make sure we've got enough fuel for the trip.

'Make sure no missiles are unlatched,

'because that's going to ruin your day if you have to use one.'

Once the radios start, that's when it all starts getting quite exciting.

RADIO CRACKLES

As soon as you've got clearance from the Ops Room,

straight up, and off you go, as fast as you can.

Once you're there, who knows what the situation's going to be like.

It's only when you get up to,

you know, a couple of thousand feet above the target area

that you start having a bit of information about what's coming back.

This is the first ever footage

of Harry's Apache in action in Afghanistan.

All sensitive information has been masked out.

Harry's job out here is to provide air support and protection

to troops operating on the ground

who are clearing compounds and villages

thought to be bases for Taliban fighters.

It could be anything from a medevac

through to troops in contact,

through to a priority, which is guys being seen with a weapons system,

probably moving into a fire position to cause harm.

If there's people trying to do bad stuff to our guys,

then we'll take them out of the game, I suppose.

It's not the reason I decided to do this job.

The reason I did this job was to get our back-up here,

and to make sure the guys are safe on the ground.

The majority of his missions today are medical emergencies,

rescuing soldiers injured in the field.

The primary role for us is the escort of the Tricky,

which is basically the mobile hospital

that we take out to the guys if they need us.

The Tricky is a mobile hospital set up in the 23-tonne Chinook helicopter.

Flying several hundred feet above them is Harry's Apache,

its Hellfire missiles and rockets providing vital cover.

Our job is to make sure that the Chinook gets in and out safely.

Out there, it is flat as a pancake, every compound looks the same.

Obviously, we've got tools and things that help us pinpoint the positions,

whatever range they are.

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.

Every time Harry leaves the base at Bastion,

he's flying straight into a war zone.

There's no special royal protection up here.

He's as vulnerable as anybody else doing this job.

Essentially, we're doing as much as we can

to make sure the guys aren't being shot at

and if they are being shot at, where they're being shot from,

then do whatever we have to do with the capabilities of the aircraft.

Saving lives and defending soldiers on the ground,

Harry's job out here is extremely important.

He knows his brother William

would relish the chance to be out here in the thick of the action too.

He'd love to be out here, and I don't see why,

to be honest with you, I don't see why he couldn't.

His job out here would be doing Chinook missions,

just the same as us. No-one knows who's in the cockpit.

Yes, you get shot at, but you know,

if the guys who are doing the same job as us

are being shot at on the ground,

then I don't think there's anything wrong with us being shot at as well

and, yeah, people back home will have issues with that,

but we're not special, the guys out there are. Simple as that.

Far more soldiers are surviving from horrific injuries than ever before,

partly as a result of the work the helicopter crews are doing.

Behind this row of ambulances is the hospital building

containing the injured soldiers that Harry has helped to rescue

from combat zones all over Helmand province.

Time can save lives,

so the quicker that Harry can help the soldiers get here,

the better their chances of survival.

Harry's missions can last up to three hours at a time,

leaving few options for the ROYAL WEE.

The best thing about this cockpit

is that in our bag, we have TravelJohns, which are basically piss bags.

Once you've been out here for two or three weeks,

you master the art of basically peeing

whilst basically sitting down like this, so...

I originally couldn't do it during the training courses,

it just couldn't happen

and also, every time I said, "Right, I'm just having a pee,"

the guy in the back would start doing this,

which, you know, it's not helpful for anybody.

TravelJohn, thank you for the amazing piss bags you make for us

because they crystallise, so spillage is near-on impossible.

However, if you ask one person on our squadron,

he did manage to have a little accident, and called up...

called up the Ops Room and said, "Yeah, wheels down in two minutes,

"plus, could you bring me a suit? I've had a little accident."

Why you would publicly announce that, I don't know, but yeah, anyway...

For Harry, privacy is hard to come by at the best of times

but his cockpit is his sanctuary.

This is my office, my environment, a chance to be away from all you guys,

a chance to be away from everybody else.

What I do in here just happens, likewise in the back.

You don't tell each other what you're doing. You just, basically, you know.

The close-knit Apache crews

alternate between day and night shifts.

They can fly in and out of combat zones up to ten times a shift.

But unlike ground troops,

they always return to the safety of Camp Bastion.

We're not at the sharp end because we're stuck in Bastion

but I know there is, probably, hopefully a minority of people

that seem to think that, you know, I've got a free pass,

I'm in this aircraft, therefore I'm as safe as houses.

Well, you don't get a free pass, no matter who you are

and if the Army didn't think they could get me out here,

then they wouldn't have put me in here

because it costs a hell of a lot, as you can imagine, to train people up

and my seat would have been taken by somebody else. Simple as that.

Camp Bastion is much safer than the front line.

It's a fortress positioned in the middle of the Helmand Desert.

The base is ringed by chain-link fences, high coils of razor wire

and blast walls with watchtowers manned by heavily-armed soldiers.

Radar, cameras and motion sensors

can monitor any movement outside the camp.

Even inside Bastion, the fear of attack is always there.

Soldiers carry their guns around with them wherever they go,

even if just hanging out in the NAAFI,

a social club for soldiers from all the forces.

This is the NAAFI. Life on Camp Bastion

is clearly made up of moments of high drama and excitement,

but also periods of great boredom.

So a lot of the soldiers come here, play pool, play computer games.

Over there, some lads have put their real rifles on the floor

as they play Call Of Duty.

'This is about the extent of their social life out here.'

Get in, get in, get in.

Are you sure that wasn't offside?

No, it's a goal.

Prince Harry, along with the rest of his squadron,

bunks up at night in accommodation like this with his fellow soldiers

and bathrooms made up of stainless steel showers, sinks and toilets.

Home here is a stark contrast to Kensington Palace.

Sleeping accommodation,

luxury at its best, I guess.

This is Harry's sleeping quarters when he's on call.

Spare beds. It's flat, it's got springs.

It's better than a cockpit...

Cockpit? A cot bed, which is what all the other guys are sleeping in,

so when you can't really roll left or right,

you're stuck in a bit of a V,

but this is my bed.

I don't really make it when I'm down here, which is a joy.

That's it made.

Only when we're on night VHR do we sleep down here.

The VHR is the Very High Readiness block - a large tented apartment

where the four-man Apache crew sleep, eat and relax as they wait.

A bench that never gets used.

Land phone.

As much privacy as one would get. If you're sitting in that seat

then you're probably speaking to home, I would have thought.

Our storeroom.

A lot of plastic cups and plates and spoons and stuff like that,

which I keep getting upset with people, saying,

"Don't use more than one plastic plate unless you have to,"

and they are like... No-one seems to get it.

Save the planet and all that.

We've probably got every DVD, every film known to mankind.

We have watched pretty much most, if not all of them.

If it is not a movie, it's FIFA.

We're quite a tight flight as well.

Yeah, I think we are.

When you're down here in the VHR environment,

there's only four of you.

As long as you all get on, which everyone does most of the time and

even if you didn't, you have to...

Everyone is always down here wishing for the phone to go because then

we are in amongst it.

Watching Prince Harry living and working out here,

it's clear that he loves getting in amongst it.

In downtime he is always joking around with his colleagues

and he seems genuinely excited about his work.

Not so surprising when you're flying one of the world's

most advanced ground attack helicopters.

Harry operates the Apache's weapons from the front seat here.

The pilot sits behind him right there

and the weapons that he gets to control include this here -

this lethal 30mm cannon.

He wears a helmet-mounted display

and the gun moves wherever he turns his head.

So the gun sees exactly what he sees.

And then round here, Hellfire missiles and rockets,

which all make up the Apache's armoury.

I'm in charge of weapons systems - a joy for me

because I one of those people that love playing PlayStation and Xbox

so, with my thumbs, I like to think I'm probably quite useful.

You can ask the guys. I thrash them at FIFA the whole time.

When you fire, you still get the cordite smell, which is bizarre.

The whole floor vibrates.

Harry won't hesitate to pull the trigger.

His job is to protect the soldiers on the ground.

If that means shooting someone who's shooting them then we'll do it.

Everyone has fired a certain amount.

We fire when we have to.

Take a life to save a life -

that's what we sort of revolve around, I suppose.

Each Apache is worth around £45 million.

Referred to by the Taliban as "the mosquito",

it is known to British troops on the ground as call sign Ugly.

This is the choice platform, as far as we are concerned,

for the guys on the ground.

I don't know where Ugly came from but it is a pretty ugly beast

and I think it's very cool.

Harry never excelled at school

but he took to his Apache training very easily.

Only a minority of those who start the course complete it.

I'm one of those people that, during my flying course especially,

I would be fine at flying.

I probably should have done a lot more reading

but I was fine at flying.

Then every now and then, a written test would come up -

I'd be absolutely useless.

And that was...

I've been like that from stage one of my youth.

Exams were always a nightmare.

Anything like kicking a ball around or playing PlayStation or flying,

I do, I generally find a little bit easier than walking, sometimes.

Normally, a newly-qualified pilot like Harry would spend his

first few years sitting in the back seat where the Apache is flown from.

A more experienced pilot would command the aircraft from the front,

operating the weapons systems.

But that's not what happened to Harry.

Two years ago when it was all decided, it was never expected

because being a junior captain or a lieutenant then, that I was,

and a non-grad, obviously not going to university

therefore the Army presume you to be less intelligent,

which is nice of them, but probably true,

but there was a couple of us

that got pushed forward to the front seat instead of the back seat.

In the front, you are the gunner

but you supposedly command the aircraft from the front as well.

Due to the lack of hours that I've got, the aircraft commander,

in my case, is in the back seat, which is slightly rare.

But it is nice to have Dave - he'll be known as Dave -

in the back sort of making sure that everything is right.

Harry's abilities were recognised

by his commanding officer in Afghanistan, Lieutenant Colonel Tom de la Rue.

If I reflect back on Harry's training,

he was awarded the best co-pilot gunner award on that course

and that was absolutely the right decision that was made.

He has been performing superbly out here.

He really is on top of his game. He is an excellent co-pilot gunner.

Successful at work, relaxed when he's hanging around the base -

Harry seems very settled in his Army life.

He does have some special security out here with him

but, that aside, he is striving to be just another Army officer.

Everybody at Camp Bastion eats here at the cookhouse.

It is probably the most secure canteen in the world

because it is considered a serious target

so to get in you have to go past armed security.

There are blast walls between each of the tables.

Unless he's on duty in the VHR,

Harry eats alongside everyone else in the canteen.

It's a chance to mix with a wider group of soldiers.

But even here he can't totally escape the fact that he's

one of the most famous 28-year-olds in the world.

I go into the cookhouse and everyone has a good old gawp

and that's one thing that I dislike about being here cos there's

plenty of guys in there who've never met me therefore probably

look at me as being Prince Harry as opposed to Captain Wales.

Harry doesn't want people to think he gets any special treatment

out here - a point that he's very passionate about.

'Yeah, it's completely normal. I don't know how many times I have

'to say and how many times I get asked by people like you but'

I'm sure you guys have asked, these guys

and everyone else with a camera

or anyone who ever wants to stick their nose in is always

wondering, "Oh, it can't be that normal." Well, it is.

And having that normality is, in itself, very unusual for the Prince.

A place like this may lack a lot of the things that people

Harry's age crave - the pubs, clubs and sporting venues -

but one thing lacking that Harry definitely doesn't miss

is a following press pack and intrusive media scrutiny.

Watching Harry around Camp Bastion,

it's clear he's happier in many ways as Captain Wales -

risking his life, spending his time in primitive accommodation

rather than royal palaces and Chelsea nightclubs.

But the problem is he can't escape the fact that

he is both a Royal and a captain.

Unlike other serving soldiers,

Harry is always a story waiting to happen and not always a good one.

A website in the United States has published photographs showing

Prince Harry naked in a Las Vegas hotel room.

One image shows him pictured with a woman who also appears to be naked.

Well, Vegas couldn't really have happened at a worse time.

Prince Harry had probably had the best summer of his life.

He had been an ambassador for the Olympics, which was a huge success,

he had been away for Granny,

representing her overseas on tour and then he decided

he deserved a bit of R and R, rightfully so,

went to Vegas with some friends, ended up partying far too hard,

drinking too much and ultimately ended up with his pants down.

Harry was snapped in the pool with girls in bikinis on a hen do.

They allegedly went up to his penthouse

and got stuck into a game of strip billiards.

Harry clearly wasn't very good at it. A naked photo of him

and a girl ripped around the world.

You know, at the end of the day, I probably let myself down,

let my family down let other people down.

It's a simple case of that.

You know, it was probably a classic example of me

probably being too much Army and not enough Prince.

I think the view of the media was this is not

the sort of behaviour you would expect from the Prince.

It's not the sort of behaviour you would expect from someone

that had just been on a big overseas tour for the Queen,

had represented their country so well.

Harry says he let himself down but he blames the media for turning

what was a party in his private hotel room into a global sensation.

At the end of the day, you know, I was in a private area

and I just think there should be a certain amount of privacy

that one should expect. Yes, people might look at it, going,

"It was letting off steam. It's all understandable now, you're going out to Afghanistan."

The papers knew I was going out to Afghan anyway

so the way I was treated from them, I don't think is acceptable.

Harry lives in an age of social media where little is private

and nothing is sacred.

I don't believe there is any such thing as private life anymore.

I'm not going to sit here and whinge.

Everyone 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, you know, I suppose that's just the way life goes.

Harry's had some fun in his time and so have the newspapers.

Not every title is inherited.

Some are earned.

Playboy Prince Harry sort of goes back right to when Harry was a kid.

He would always be getting himself into trouble.

He was always, Diana said, "The naughty one."

I always remember being told by one of his friends at Eton that he

was the one that would always play the prank on the teacher.

LAUGHTER

I think the problem developed

when these schoolboy high jinks became something more serious.

Nobody is ruling out another incident

from a demob-happy party prince.

I think Harry deserves to let off steam.

If he ends up in a nightclub, which I'm sure he will, then good for him.

Just keep your clothes on next time.

During his tour of Afghanistan, Harry's exasperation,

even loathing of the press has shone through loud and clear.

My father always says, "Don't read it."

Everyone says, "Don't read it cos it's always rubbish."

I'm surprised how many people in the UK actually read it.

I mean, everyone is guilty for buying the newspapers, I guess,

but hopefully nobody actually believes what they read,

which I certainly don't. But, yeah, of course I read it.

If there's a story and something has 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, about everything and everybody.

-INTERVIEWER:

-And that mistrust of the press, how far back does that go?

Is that something...?

I think it's fairly obvious how far back it goes.

To when I was very small.

Harry's mother Princess Diana

was one of the most photographed people in history.

Growing up, William and Harry had to get used to

cameras following them around wherever they went.

Nobody had experienced the full onslaught of the paparazzi

quite like Diana before.

15 years ago, she was killed in a car crash in Paris,

having been chased by photographers.

Prince Harry is no fan of the media and, you know, he says himself,

"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out why."

I think both he and William largely blame

the paparazzi for the death of their mother.

The media should, I always believe,

have a responsibility on how they report on people.

We've seen too many times in the past, someone behind a desk

write something, a story about someone, which can end up persuading

a whole nation on people's opinions of that individual.

With Prince Harry's Vegas fun and games filling the front pages,

Afghanistan couldn't have come at a better time.

Away from the chasing media pack and his public profile,

you get the feeling that sitting here, in this cockpit,

is where Harry is actually at his happiest.

My father is always trying to remind me about who I am.

But it's very easy to completely forget about who I am

when I'm in the Army.

Everyone's wearing the same uniform and doing the same kind of thing.

And all the officers get called sir, and it's great fun,

I get on well with the lads and I enjoy my job.

It seems odd that Harry seeks normality and security

deep in a war zone.

Contrary to what you might expect, day-to-day life here

can be fairly mundane.

Out here it's, you know, it's a fairly simple life.

When it's quiet, essentially we just sit inside the tent.

We sit there and wait for the phone to go.

Sundays, there's little call for the Apaches,

which means an awful lot of hanging around.

We just play computer games, watch movies,

-talk

-BLEEP

-and play Uckers out the side there.

Uckers - don't worry, I haven't heard of it either -

is an Army tradition.

I lost for the first time yesterday, while you guys were here, at Uckers.

I won last night, which was good, very quickly.

Go on, son.

Take that, it's a free kick.

We are one of the flights that really enjoy the PlayStation.

FIFA's great fun.

-LAUGHTER

-There it is!

There's always time for a few creature comforts.

Friends and family send packages out.

It's mostly sweets, Haribo - everyone seems to think I love Haribo.

Unfortunately, I do.

Fellow pilot Captain Simon Beattie has been out here with Harry

since September.

Harry is a good guy.

He's been round to our house a few times for dinner

and bits and pieces.

Here we go. It's on.

Easy to put aside the fact that he's third-in-line to the throne.

Get the ball. Go.

Go! Go!

He's a normal guy.

He's someone I consider a friend and someone I enjoy work with.

'He is just one of the lads.'

He comes in, he makes the brews for the boys, he chats, he has banter.

He is just a normal member of Air Crew.

'Everyone treats him as an officer in the British Army.'

He's very professional in what he does

and he mixes with the lads quite well.

I am one of the guys, I don't get treated any differently.

Hopefully most people will look at me, going,

"It's great to have him on board, wearing the same uniform and doing the same job as us."

Harry's been in my regiment for just under a year.

He is not treated any differently.

My interaction with him

is exactly the same as with any of my other officers.

I think he's very much enjoying the anonymity that he's experiencing at the moment out here,

and getting on and doing the job that he's been trained to do.

Harry's not the first Royal to seek sanctuary in military service.

The Royals have a long tradition of serving in the armed forces.

But nothing's ever simple for Harry.

Even his Army career has been dogged by problems.

Harry set his heart on being a soldier at a very young age.

It came as no surprise when he chose to train as an Army officer

at Sandhurst, instead of university.

In early 2007, Harry looked set to be deployed

to the front line in Iraq.

Having gone through all the training,

he was now looking forward to experiencing the real thing.

If they said, "No, you can't go front line,"

then I wouldn't drag my sorry ass through Sandhurst.

The last thing I want to do is have my soldiers sent away to Iraq

and for me to be held back home twiddling my thumbs,

thinking, "Well, what about David, what about Derek?"

You know.

But his joy was short-lived.

There have been a number of specific threats which relate directly

-to Prince Harry.

-MOB CHANT

Militias in Iraq were threatening to kidnap and kill Prince Harry.

He was forced to stay at home.

These threats expose not only him, but also those around him,

to a degree of risk that I now deem unacceptable.

Being told that he was going to Iraq and then being told

he wasn't going to Iraq was horrific.

So Harry had to watch all of his men from Squadron A be deployed

to Iraq and he had to stay at home.

I think that was the all-time low of his military career.

BRASS BAND PLAYS

In a revealing interview, Harry admitted the Iraq episode

had made him question his future in the Army.

If I'm going to cause this much chaos to a lot of people,

then maybe I should just, you know, bow out,

not just for my own sake but for everybody else's sake.

There was a lot of frustration but, as they say in the Army,

turn to the right and carry on.

During that period of frustration,

did you ever wish that you weren't a prince?

Um...

I wish that quite a lot actually, Peter. But...

Yeah, you know, as William and I have said numerous times,

there's a lot of opportunities that we miss out on

as well as we obviously get a lot of chances for who we are,

but in April last year or the beginning of this year,

it was very hard and I did think, "Well, clearly one of the main reasons

"that I'm not allowed to be going is because of who I am."

So, yes, I did wish at that time that I wasn't.

When Prince Harry wasn't deployed

and Squadron A went off to Iraq without him,

Harry did what Harry always does, I think, in a moment of self-doubt

and crisis - he went out, got drunk, fell out of nightclubs all over again.

And I think his friends were really worried that he had actually lost

his sense of purpose.

But later that year, the Army and the Palace came up with a new plan

which would thrust Harry onto the front line - not in Iraq,

but in Afghanistan - and in total secrecy.

Just a few hundred metres from the Taliban.

Helmand was, by far, the most dangerous province in Afghanistan

at that time, where you had massive Taliban efforts to control Helmand.

Fire, over.

Harry was to be posted to a forward operating base

right on the front line in Helmand,

to fight with a company of Gurkhas and US Forces.

An agreed media blackout for the duration of his tour

meant his presence remained unknown.

It was Christmas Eve

and there was some kind of rumour about a VIP coming.

I recall a helicopter coming in,

and less than an hour later I saw the Gurkhas

coming off the front lines, running over to take pictures of somebody.

If you take any longer, bullets could come in.

And looked back and there was Prince Harry.

'I was always hoping to get forward.'

And I got here on Christmas Eve.

Not your typical Christmas, but Christmas is overrated anyway so...

Within about 600-700 metres, within direct fire range,

you had Taliban front lines.

We had estimates of a few hundred Taliban out in front of us.

There was constant mortar fire, missile fire,

direct fire where they'd fire and we'd fire back at them.

And it's somewhat like what I can imagine World War II to be like.

It's just no-man's-land. The Taliban are sort of invisible.

They poke their heads up and then that's it.

They disappear and just jump down these holes or go into their bunkers.

-Same position?

-Yeah.

We really suspected the Taliban were going to take

advantage of Christmas and Christmas Eve, so everyone was on high alert.

It was kind of a long night for everybody.

This was an environment few modern Royals had ever experienced.

Harry had come face-to-face with the tough reality of war.

-So what, the ANP went up to check his body?

-Yeah.

Every soldier that's operating out in Afghanistan is under threat

from the moment you step off, from the moment you come into

the air space of Afghanistan.

That's just the way it is, it's the reality and you've got to face up to it.

The sort of joke we had was that clearly the British have

the heir and the spare because Harry was the spare, in this case,

and it was clear to us Americans that they knew he could die there,

that was... That could easily happen.

The danger was even greater when Harry left the base.

He faced the constant threat of being shot at and roadside bombs.

When I do go on patrols, in amongst the locals,

I'll still be very wary about the fact that I need to keep

my face slightly covered just on the off chance that I do get recognised,

which will put other guys in danger.

INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER

As a forward air controller, guiding fighter jets

and artillery onto Taliban positions,

Harry was proving his worth as a fully fledged JTAC -

a Joint Tactical Air Controller.

If the guys are coming under a lot of fire, then I call the air in.

My job being a JTAC means that I'm needed around the place

to actually support troops that come under contact.

A lot of the time the guys are engaging invisible firing points

because the Taliban are very good at hiding in their trenches.

His job was as critical, quite frankly,

to the safety of the base -

based on the numbers of Taliban, if they had tried to overrun,

he would have been the critical component

in calling in the close air support to prevent that from happening.

Everything in-between these canals is known as no-man's-land,

and any movement in there is basically presumed enemy.

Well, it is enemy because no-one lives here any more.

And if there's anyone seeing any movement in there,

they are fire positions.

The amount of ordnance that's been dropped on the place

and there's no roof on any of the compounds, there's craters all over

the place. It looks like something out of the Battle Of The Somme.

And sure enough, as you look at it, I lose feed.

The Americans have arrived, all is well in the Empire.

They pooled dogs.

I was going to go and pet one, he goes, "No, killer dog."

I was like, "OK."

He goes, "Drugs dog - friendly. Killer dog - not so friendly."

All right, OK.

They bring all that just for the meeting?

-Probably have them with them all the time(!)

-No, they're just...

taking them for a walk(!)

I would call Harry "Harry" and he would call me "Bill".

There was no sort of "Prince Harry" or any kind of deference shown

in that way, and frankly, he wouldn't have wanted it, from what I could tell.

And I think he liked just being Lieutenant Harry

and doing his job there.

You kind of quickly forgot that he was a prince in the Royal Family.

This is what it's all about.

Being here with the guys rather than being in a room

with a bunch of officers.

It's very nice to be sort of a normal person for once.

This is about as normal as I'm ever going to get.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm out here as a normal JTAC on the ground

and not Prince Harry.

Look!

It's very nice just to be here and be with all the guys

and just sort of mucking in as one of the lads.

Do you want more?

I think what he liked was he could just be himself, he could

metaphorically let his hair down and just be one of the lieutenants.

LAUGHTER

There we were, saying... I never actually asked what it meant.

The company commander was there

and there was some joking back and forth.

It really was good to watch him be there and just be a soldier

that wanted to be a soldier.

This was probably the closest to a normal life Harry had ever known,

and due to the secret deal with the Palace, military and media,

it was the furthest he'd ever been from the press.

I don't want to sit around at Windsor, because, you know,

it's nice to be away from all the press and the papers

and the general shite that they write.

Shall we call it?

It's very nice to be out of touch with everything.

I mean, that is probably the nicest bit about this place.

All right, that's good.

You're miles away from everybody, miles away from everything.

The people out here, the last thing they want to worry about is

"Who's that?" I can walk around without actually people going, "Oh!"

But Harry's fantasy couldn't last for long,

and the story leaked to the foreign media.

At 6 o'clock, over and out -

Prince Harry's time on the frontline in Afghanistan

comes to an abrupt end.

He's heading home after his deployment was leaked,

threatening his safety and that of his colleagues.

The Prince was furious at being forced home

10 weeks into a posting he'd long sought.

Doesn't surprise me that, once again, it comes down to media,

foreign media that's once again spilled the beans.

So, yeah, it's a shame, but it's to be expected, I guess.

After his cover had been blown,

it looked like the end of Harry's career on the frontline.

But the Army quickly came up with a new plan

which would enable him to return to Afghanistan.

Harry was to retrain as an attack helicopter pilot

alongside his brother,

who was learning to fly helicopters for the RAF.

The press, as always, were hot on his heels.

Was it made pretty clear to you after the last time in Afghanistan

that it would be your first and last time,

that it was too risky for you to go back as a soldier?

More the fact that I think the media had said they would never

keep their mouths shut if I went into the same job,

so I'd have to do something different if I wanted to go, yes.

To get out to Afghanistan again would be fantastic,

and my best chance is to do it from a helicopter.

Have you got off the ground yet?

-Sorry?

-Have you got off the ground yet?

I've just got off the ground, yeah. Thanks for asking(!)

Sorry, just checking.

Prince Harry in Afghanistan is one thing, but as the future king,

could Prince William ever be deployed to the front line?

I didn't join the Forces to be mollycoddled

or treated any different, and as far as I'm concerned, in my eyes,

if Harry can do it, then I can do it.

I think as a future Head Of The Armed Forces,

it's really important that I at least get the opportunity

to be credible and to do the job that I signed up for.

William may be the future Head Of The Armed Forces,

but as the heir to the throne,

he's unlikely to ever be placed in as much danger as Harry.

I think he's definitely got more brains than me.

I think we've established that from school.

But when it comes to all that, I'm much better hands on.

-I've got more great looks as well, obviously.

-Yeah. And baldness.

-Sorry?

-When are you flying solo?

When am I flying solo? When I'm ready.

And he was ready last summer.

Four and a half years after his last tour to Afghanistan,

Harry's made it back.

Despite all the media attention,

he's once again serving on the front line -

this time, 2,000 feet above it.

The deal the Army chiefs came up with

was to base Harry in the relative safety of Camp Bastion.

It was an environment they had total control over - no enemies,

no press, and, they believed, secure.

Flying Apaches in and out of combat areas is undoubtedly dangerous,

but the risk of Harry actually being identified in a cockpit

was thought to be minimal.

If this is the only way that I can do it,

getting back out to Afghanistan, then so be it.

My choice would have been back out on the ground with my regiment.

That sounds quite spoilt when I'm standing in front of this thing,

£45 million worth, but yeah. I think, hopefully,

my friends and family back home know exactly what I'm talking about.

Though delighted to be back in Afghanistan,

Harry cannot disguise his disappointment

at not being back out on the front line with ground troops.

The last job was for me, personally, better.

It's a weird reality, being stuck in Bastion.

For me, I hate it, being stuck here.

You know, what's going on out there is completely separate,

but as soon as you're outside the fence, all this stuff,

it's just forgotten about.

But it is a pain in the arse being stuck in Bastion.

But the logic of publicly placing Harry inside Camp Bastion

was to be questioned shortly after his arrival.

Some breaking news - at least two Americans have been killed

in a militant attack on a major base in southern Afghanistan.

The insurgents launched their brazen attack last night

under the cover of darkness.

Prince Harry was here in Afghanistan

for his 28th birthday last September.

It was an occasion marked not by celebration,

but by an attack by the Taliban on Camp Bastion.

Taliban insurgents dressed in American Army uniforms

broke into the camp and destroyed six US Harrier jets.

A four-hour firefight with Royal Air Force gunners

-and US Marines followed.

-Something we weren't expecting.

The base is quite well-defended.

Obviously, they've found the weak point and managed to exploit that

and get onto the base. But once they were on,

they were dealt with effectively and quickly.

A Taliban video claimed that Prince Harry was the primary target.

Whether or not that's true is impossible to know,

but at the time of the attack,

Harry was in a different part of Camp Bastion.

Obviously, the papers back home were like,

"Ooh, this is all against me."

This camp is in the middle of Afghanistan, and, you know,

you should be expecting to be attacked at any point,

and the guys dealt with it really well, and it was on my birthday,

so it was a bit of a reality check.

The reality is that the casualties continued

to mount up in Afghanistan.

More than 400 British soldiers have been killed since 2002,

and thousands injured,

a higher casualty rate than in Iraq or the Falklands.

This memorial to all of the British service personnel

that have been killed in the Afghan campaign

is a reminder that beyond the fence, there's a war going on,

and every time Harry gets in his helicopter,

the risk that he faces is very real.

With Christmas having been and gone,

Harry's time in Afghanistan is coming to an end.

After five months away,

Harry's thoughts are beginning to turn to home.

To be honest, it's got to that stage now where

I think everybody really wants to go home.

It gets like that for everybody.

You know, we're coming up to the five-month stage.

I miss family and friends, like everybody does.

I imagine it to be so tough for people with kids.

10 weeks last time was like a holiday.

Just at the point you get bored, it was time for me to go home,

but that was, for me...

That hurt, being pulled out at that point,

being dragged away from my guys.

I think it was all done...

-It wasn't done in the wrong way, but it was just...

-< Look at that.

And Harry's gone again, off on another Apache mission.

In the end, it's not entirely true

to say that Prince Harry's just like any other soldier.

There is obviously a novelty to people here.

He goes around with security, for example.

But someone just made a good point to me,

which is that when you first see him, you think, "Oh, wow!

"There's Prince Harry." But then, you think that again

the second time - by the third time,

they just see him as one of the boys,

and he eats in the cookhouse and he shops in the NAAFI,

and the other thing that strikes you is that

he's not just doing this for symbolism,

he's not just doing it for PR reasons cos of recent events.

It appears that when he's here, he genuinely is at his happiest.

That could be because Harry's Army career

is something he's personally chosen himself,

unlike his life as a Royal.

How long I'm going to spend in the Army, who knows?

I will continue to juggle my time between flying this thing

and doing the other job, which can be arduous,

but I'm lucky I've got a job. Lots of people haven't,

so I'm never going to whinge or complain about that.

"The other job" is being a member of the Royal Family.

Once he leaves Afghanistan, he'll have to try

and balance the different sides of his life again.

You've got to be able to flick the switch.

I think I said a while back there are sort of three of me, as there were.

There were one in the Army, one sort of socially,

my own private time, and then one with the family and stuff like that.

So, you know, there is a switch, and I flick it when necessary.

'This is the plane. This is the plane.'

Harry flew back to Britain and the snow.

Waiting for him with cameras at the ready

were his favourite people - the press.

It's been great. Really proud of the guys, the whole squadron.

'It's a hell of an experience. You get life experiences

'that you would get nowhere else out there.'

Welcome home, Harry.

'Very different to when I was last out there.

'I'll be looking forward to going back and seeing my family.'

Hiya.

I'm longing to see my brother and sister-in-law,

as any other soldier that's just come off the plane,

four and a half months away.

I really am longing to catch up with people behind closed doors.

You guys aren't invited.

I think he doesn't like us media people.

And press controversy has followed his return.

Some have criticised the way he appeared to casually compare

playing computer games with operating his deadly weaponry.

You get asked to do things that you'd expect to do

wearing this uniform, and that's as simple as that, really.

For the thousands of guys that are on operations at the moment,

we're continuing, essentially, to try and do a job,

a job for ourselves, a job for the guys left and right of us,

and from my point of view especially, for the guys on the ground.

British combat troops are due to leave Afghanistan

at the end of 2014, so it's unlikely

Harry will get another chance to go back out there.

He'd partly gone to find what he considered to be a normal existence,

but at the end of his second tour, he no longer knows what "normal" is.

Normal for me...

I don't know what normal is any more, and I never really have done,

but there's nothing normal about what we've been doing

for the last four and a half months.

There's nothing normal about what's going on out there.

In the last day that I was there,

a seven-year-old girl got shot down by the insurgents, so, you know,

normality is a very ambiguous thing, if you know what I mean.

ENGINE WHINES

It's not just because he's a prince

that Harry stands out from the crowd.

Not many people would choose to swap a life of luxury

for the dangers and harsh conditions of a war zone.

Happy days. Good to go.

We're not special. The guys out there are.

This young man who could have done anything,

could have stayed in the UK and done whatever,

decided to put his life on the line,

go to the most austere part of Afghanistan,

not as a press stunt,

because it's where he wanted to be,

and lead by example.

6-7, Roger, that's clear.

JET ENGINE ROARS

And that's a story that's got to be told with all the other stuff,

and I think, taking his life as a whole,

he's a man that deserves our respect and honour for what he's done.

To the public, there seems to be three sides to Harry -

the prince, the playboy and the Army pilot.

Trying to decipher which of the three

is the real Harry is impossible,

but one of them certainly appears to be his priority.

Once you're wearing the uniform, you're part of the gang.

Fine, I'm the Queen's grandson and all that good stuff,

and I'm out here representing her, but to be honest with you,

as far as I see it and as far as William sees it as well,

our service towards our country in the military,

whichever shape or form it takes, will always come first.

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