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Royal target
Sat, Mar 01, 2008 The Straits Times
LONDON - BRITAIN'S Prince Harry knew that when media stories emerged about his presence as a soldier in Afghanistan, he would become an instant target for Al-Qaeda and Taleban militants. 'Once this film comes out...every single person that supports them will be trying to slot me,' he told a group of embargoed journalists visiting him during his time in the southern province of Helmand. 'Now that you come to think about it, it's quite worrying...But as I say, now that this film has been made and now...people will know I'm out here, no doubt I'll be a top target.' Interviews and pictures of the 23-year-old prince serving what was supposed to be a four-month tour were widely published in the British media yesterday after an embargo on announcing his presence there was shattered by a US website, The Drudge Report.

But the only thing that held him back, he told the journalists, was the prospect of a tour in Afghanistan that was 'dangled as a carrot'.

He retrained as a battlefield air controller, known as a JTAC (Joint Terminal Attack Controller), to go to Afghanistan and flew out on Dec14, becoming part of Britain's 7,700-strong force in southern Afghanistan.

He was partnered with battlefield air controller Corporal David Baxter. Corporal Baxter's previous partner had gone on leave after serving back-

to-back tours in Iraq and Afghanistan without a break, and the 28-year-old former tank driver from Northern Ireland had been told he would be sent a newly trained Forward Air Controller - Prince Harry.

The prince's job involved covert aerial surveillance of Taleban positions, coordinating planes and helicopters entering his area and - when necessary - calling in airstrikes, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph yesterday.

'He's a really down-to-earth person,' said Corporal Baxter.

'To be honest, I don't think anyone thinks of him as third in line to the throne or anything. You just take him at face value as any other Household Cavalry officer.'

Although his work saw him spend hours on end speaking with pilots from many countries over the radio, Prince Harry was known to them only by his call sign Widow Six Seven.

He spent several weeks working in Garmsir, in the far south of Helmand province, operating just 500m from frontline Taleban positions.

He is no longer in Garmsir, although the details cannot be reported for security reasons.

Prince Harry - once dubbed a royal 'wild child' by British tabloids for underage drink and drugs antics - relished the prospect of being anonymous and being treated as 'just one of the lads'.

Photographs and film footage released as a result of the embargo being broken revealed that his responsibilities in Afghanistan also included conducting foot patrols through villages.

Video footage also showed him firing a machine gun on suspected militants, using a field telephone and apparently trying to restart a stalled motorcycle.

In interviews, the prince said he joked about his nickname - 'bullet magnet' - with colleagues.

Talking at one point about his experiences on the front lines, Prince Harry said: 'It's bizarre. I haven't really had a shower for four days, I haven't washed my clothes for a week. It's very nice to be sort of a normal person for once. I think this is about as normal as I'm ever going to get.'

Christmas Day, he said, was spent in a former Taleban madrasah peppered with bullet holes eating scrawny chickens slaughtered with the Gurkhas' fearsome kukri knives instead of festive turkey.

'Everyone is really well looked after here by the Gurkhas, the food is fantastic - goat curries, chicken curries...' he said. 'It's good fun to be with just a normal bunch of guys, listening to their problems, listening to what they think.'

To one question about what his mother, the late princess Diana, would think, he replied: 'Hopefully, she would be proud.'

The prince - the younger son of Princess Diana and Prince Charles - was just 12 when his mother died in a Paris car crash in August 1997.

He said he had received a letter from his elder brother Prince William saying his mother would have been proud.

But he admitted he did not spend too much time thinking about it amid attacks by what he and colleagues call 'Terry Taleban'.

'You know, at the end of the day I'm an officer and you're supposed to be able to look after everybody and that's the way it is - you come last,' he said. 'So I haven't really had a chance to sit down and think about it much.'

Asked about the British public's reaction to his deployment, he said he hoped they would approve by simply saying 'so what?'

'I wouldn't expect the British public to make much of it,' he said. 'I think they would just turn round and go, 'Yep, good on him, good on the people who got him out there, he's a soldier, so what?', that sort of thing.'

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE