The story behind the story.....

..... by now y'all have heard that England's young Prince Harry (Cornet Wales, H.) has been in the heat of battle in Afghanistan for the last three months. The news, broken by Matt Drudge, has now caused the Brit's Minister of Defense to recall him. Not just for Prince Harry's sake, but for the safety of his mates.... since he would become a 'bullet magnet'.

There is a lot to read about this adventure and I'm sure we'll get the best and the worst of it, but I think these three short paragraphs excerpted from a long article in today's London Telegraph tells it 'like it is'!

[......] "And Prince Harry has been very expensively additionally trained as a joint forward air controller. It is he who, in contact with the Taliban, directs the fire of the RAF and Royal Navy's aircraft and the Apache attack helicopters of the Army Air Corps, and, on occasions, allied air support. It is the most precise of skills, and only painstakingly acquired. The rifleman can take cover, but the air controller's eye must still be on the enemy. Cornet Wales is at the sharp end, and a great deal rests on him.

Indeed, he has been at the sharp end for two and a half months, qualifying already, therefore, for the Afghanistan operational medal. Day by day he will have been patrolling, on foot and in armoured vehicles, with men who share his cap badge and others whom he is supporting. That he has been able to do so without the story leaking out says a great deal about comradeship in the Army, and, too, the respect in which the Prince is quite evidently held by his fellow soldiers. The temptations to spill the beans will have been intense.

"Every man thinks meanly of himself for never having been to sea nor having been a soldier," wrote Dr Johnson. And it is also true that every soldier thinks meanly of himself until he has heard the sound of the guns. Prince Harry's great-grandmother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, famously welcomed the German bomb that fell on Buckingham Palace during the Blitz, declaring that "now she could look the East End in the eye".

Well, now Cornet Wales can look every soldier in the eye. Indeed, he can look the whole country in the eye. And his gritty determination to do his bit ought to have recruits clamouring at every barracks gate."

I reckon we'll all hear lame comments about his service from some pencil pushers.... but I also reckon we ain't gonna hear or read one bad word about this young Royal from anybody who has worn a uniform for their (or our) country! As my Brit brother-in-law would say; "Good on ya 'arry!!"