By Robert Kellaway

JUST 12 days to Christmas and party-loving Harry's favourite West End haunts were throbbing—but at Windsor Barracks the young prince was preparing for real action. At last this was it—the eve of Harry's War...

DECEMBER 13: Forget the cocktails, an early night is a must. The adrenaline was already pumping but Second Lieutenant Harry's first battle was packing everything on the huge kit list into his Bergen rucksack.

Every pouch was stuffed to bursting. His SA80A2 rifle and 9mm pistol were travelling separately under guard, but there was still his Osprey body armour, kevlar helmet, radio, doss bag, air bed, hot and cold weather clothing, daytime rucksack, toiletries, towel, mossie repellent, sun cream, goggles, head torch, batteries.

The list went for over 100 lines. Finally everything was in. The prince was ready for war.

Risk

DECEMBER 14: Harry and a small party heaved their kit on to a coach before dawn, desert boots crunching on frost, and left for RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire. The prince boarded a massive C17 transport aircraft. The plane's cavernous hold was stuffed with cargo but Harry and the others got their heads down in sleeping bags between the loads.

After 12 hours in the air the pilot announced their approach to Kandahar. The lights dimmed and everyone donned helmet and body armour— against the real risk of ground attack on landing.

On the ground, lounging on battered chairs in a dusty ops room, the prince and his party listened intently to their arrival brief—on the tactical situation in Afghanistan plus info on where to eat and sleep, plus imminent threats to coalition forces.

With all that ringing through his head Harry crashed out on a camp bed. He'd made it to Afghanistan—but was still a long way from the front.

DECEMBER 15: Harry began an immediate "in-theatre training package" detailing the infantry techniques expected of him while fighting in Afghanistan. But the prince was determined to make his own mark. He wanted to stand out from the crowd. Instead of the standard-issue desertcoloured smock he donned a special SAS one. And he proudly customised the front of his own body armour with an Estonian army badge depicting an eagle—a personal souvenir.

He was advised to tuck his Browning pistol into the front of his body armour so it's easier to get hold of.

And he got hot tips on staying alive from the SAS men he so admires—like always aim for a target's head not his torso, often protected by armour.

DECEMBER 16: After being issued with live ammunition and morphine— worn around the neck with his ID tags in case of injury—Harry flew south, closer to the action, in a Chinook helicopter.

Door and tail gunners scanned the desert below for enemy fighters throughout the one-hour flight before landing in a cloud of dust on a plateau. Harry and the others hurled out baggage then ran to the rear. Crouched with their backs to the stinging whirlwind of stones and sand, they waited with eyes and mouths clamped tight shut until the giant chopper was gone.

Harry had arrived at Camp Dwyer—chillingly named after a 22-year-old artillery man killed by a landmine last year.

It lies in open desert just seven miles from the deserted frontline town of Garmsir, a major crossing point on the Helmand River and ‘choke point' for Taliban forces and equipment coming up from Pakistan.

The ever-present danger means the camp is ringed by a ditch, razor wire and walls built from 5ft-high wire-reinforced fabric containers of sand and gravel. The perimeter is guarded by a devastating array of weapons including heavy machine guns and grenade machine guns.

Harry was exhausted but was still thrilled to be there, after almost quitting the Army when he was refused permission to go to Iraq because of the increased risks it would put on his comrades.

But the news blackout had made Afghanistan possible.

Harry said: "I would never want to put someone else's life in danger when they have to sit next to the bullet magnet."

DECEMBER 17: The prince—or ‘H' as many call him— was briefed and given his job in the hi-tech Tactical Air Control Party or TACP, queuing up airstrikes in the sky, keeping them safely away from artillery shells.

Harry also kept tabs on the Taliban, watching them on his ‘Kill TV' surveillance pictures beamed from warplanes and remote-controlled unmannned Desert Hawk surveillance aircraft.

The prince said: "As soon as they hear planes Terry Taliban and his mates go to ground which makes life a little bit tricky.

"So having something that gives you a visual feedback from way up means that they carry on with their normal pattern of life and we can follow them."

Harry was known only by his call sign Widow Six Seven as he kept pilots on their toes with banter while they circled above waiting for his orders to attack.

And his flirting with RAF Harrier pilot Michelle Tompkins earned him some ribbing. He was overheard chatting away to her about the snow on the mountains they could see below her. When he suggested to her it would be ideal for a ski-ing trip laughing colleagues butted in on a separate channel telling Harry: "If this goes on you'll have to get a room!"

The prince's boss Major Andrew Dimmock said: "We were obviously taking the mickey. But Harry just said, ‘Does that count as the Mile High club?'"

The prince was kept awake day and night at Dwyer as the battery of guns pounded Taliban positions south of Garmsi. But he settled in quickly and thrived in the rough conditions, including very basic thunderbox loos which drained into oil tanks.

After just one week Harry asked to go even closer to the front line, joining the Forward Air Controllers directing air strikes on the Taliban.

DECEMBER 24: Harry got his Christmas wish and was ordered forward to join the Gurkhas at Patrol Base Delhi in downtown Garmsir. The town's High Street is the British front line—the start of a 500 metre no-man's land of bombed trenches, irrigation ditches and shattered farms.

Life is hard at the base, two rectangular mud-walled compounds with watchtowers on the corners. Harry's sleeping billet was mortar-proof.

It had to be—Taliban rockets and RPGs have got through causing devastating injuries.

But the prince said he loved the feeling of being an ordinary person for a change, adding: "It's bizarre.

"I'm out here now, haven't really had a shower for four days, haven't washed my clothes for a week and everything seems completely normal.

"I think this is about as normal as I'm ever going to get.

"What am I missing the most? Nothing really.

"I honestly don't know what I miss at all—we've got music, we've got light, we've got food, we've got (non-alcoholic) drink.

"No, I don't miss booze, if that's the next question!

"It's nice just to be here with all the guys and just mucking in as one of the lads.

Bonus

"What it's all about is being here with the guys rather than being in a room with a bunch of officers.

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

And the one big bonus of being with the Gurkhas was...the food.

At Dwyer Harry got sick of the ration packs, foil bag meals heated in boiling water.

So he was thrilled to find his new comrades making delicious curries from freshly slaughtered meat.

He said: "Everyone is really well looked after here by the Gurkhas, the food is fantastic— goat curries, chicken curries."

DECEMBER 31: New Year's Eve marked the dramatic climax to Harry's mission as a group of Taliban got into a vicious firefight with the Gurkhas close to the base.

Harry had been holding two US F15 fighter jets six miles away, out of sight.

He identified two separate targets at either end of a bunker system and then called in the jets to knock them out with three 500lb bombs, killing up to 30 Taliban fighters.

JANUARY 2: Harry began a week working on JTAC (Joint Terminal Attack Controller) Hill—a mud brick fortress outside Base Delhi.

It is the only elevated point for miles around and the Taliban have been trying to blast the Brits out of it for more than a year.

And determined Harry wasn't about to let them in. As the Gurkhas unleashed a £65,000 Javelin missile at Taliban fighters on the edge of no-man's land the Prince went into action firing a 50-calibre heavy machine gun from a watchtower on the top of the hill.

JANUARY 7: There were worries that Harry's cover may be blown when Australian women's magazine New Idea revealed his whereabouts.

Luckily nobody seemed to notice.

JANUARY 10: Harry's tough time in Garmsir paid off—his Brigade bosses at Camp Bastion decided he had passed a severe operational test and it was time to move him on. Now he would combine his new airstrike skills with his original role commanding tanks and going into battle.

He was ordered to the war-scarred town of Musa Qala in the infamous Sangin Valley, the Taliban's deadly central heartland.

The town had just been retaken from the Taliban in a massive two-week assault by US and British troops driving out 600 to 700 fighters.

Harry landed at Forward Operating Base Edinburgh to join a troop of Spartan reconnaissance tanks.

EARLY FEBRUARY: A Christmas card from Prince Charles finally caught up with Harry, almost two months late. Harry branded the forces' delivery of post to our troops as "pants!"

LATE FEBRUARY: The prince was commanding a seven-strong Spartan team supporting a major US and Afghan attack to seize the village of Kariz de Baba, close to Musa Qala.

Harry's job was to lie in wait outside the village and attack or capture Taliban fighters fleeing under the American onslaught.

Although the prince met lots of Afghan civilians face to face as he stopped and searched vehicles he was never recognised.

Ambush

What did he say to the locals? Harry said: "The great question is ‘Where's the Taliban?

"I have asked ‘Where's Bin Laden?' in the past. They just laugh. One guy said 'You're too late!'"

It was here on patrol in Southern Helmand that Harry had his closest shave—his convoy nearly hit a Taliban landmine.

It was spotted in their path by a drone aircraft and the column was halted within a whisker of an ambush.

One senior Army source said: "It could easily have been a bloodbath."

The homemade mine, called an Improvised Explosive Device or IED by the military, was constructed from an old Russian anti-tank shell.

Harry employed his new skills as a forward air controller to save valuable hours on the operation by intercepting a helicopter carrying a Gurkha bomb disposal team and persuading it to CHANGE its landing spot.

The helicopter had been ordered to land several kilometres away to cut the risk of being mortared from the ground.

But Harry managed to persuade decision-makers to allow the team to land close up for the first time, promising a squadron of Spartan and Scimitar armoured vehicles as protection.

Harry said with a smile: "It's rare you actually manage to change their minds."

FEBRUARY 28: Harry's big secret was out.

Internet journalist Matt Drudge spotted the earlier Harry report on New Idea's website and splashed it across his own.

Military chiefs were forced to move the furious prince out of the field immediately.

FEBRUARY 29: Military chiefs ordered Harry home fearing the Taliban were about to launch an offensive to kill him at all costs.

MARCH 1: Harry returned to Brize Norton full of praise for our troops, insisting:

"The bravery of the guys out there was humbling. I'm no more a hero than anyone else."

DEADLY WEAPONS

This hot pair's manoeuvres clearly impressed Harry on a break from duty. Here he is admiring emma Frain and Amli Grove in Zoo Mag. Emma, 20, said: "I am really flattered."

Click here for more pics of Harry's pin-ups