Prince Harry: 'I think this is as normal as I'm ever going to get'

IT IS only 500 metres across no-man's-land to the Taleban front line, and the British soldiers come under fire several times a day.

The night-time temperatures were minus 8C when Harry arrived and there is no heating in the sleeping quarters.

The "showers" are a bag hung up in a wooden cubicle, the urinals are a row of angled pipes half-buried in the sand, and the main toilets are the dreaded " thunderboxes" – plywood structures with a hole cut in the centre, inside flimsy wooden cubicles.

Welcome to the British Army's Forward Operating Base (Fob) "Delhi" in Afghanistan. It's not exactly the home comforts Prince Harry is used to, but he doesn't mind one bit.

"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.

"What am I missing the most? Nothing really," he said in January, as he sat in his bedspace at the camp, a former Taleban madrassa with bullet- holes peppering the walls.

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

Clearly conscious of his tabloid image back home, he quickly added: "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.

"It's very nice to be a normal person for once – I think this is about as normal as I'm ever going to get."

On his arrival in war-ravaged Helmand province just before Christmas, the prince was sent to Fob Dwyer, the headquarters of the battlegroup headed by his own Household Cavalry Regiment.

But he didn't stay long in that dusty and isolated outpost in the middle of the desert, about six miles from the front line. He asked his commanding officer if he could spend Christmas Day with the Gurkhas at Fob Delhi, and it was agreed Harry could stay on there for a while to fulfil his dream on serving on the front line.

"I was hoping to come down here for Christmas Day to be with the Gurkhas," the prince explained.

"I don't know why, it was just something I wanted to do, just to be with them. They don't really celebrate Christmas that much, but we had some fantastic games, which we played in the yard there."

These Nepalese-style games included one that involved catching a chicken. This year, having left Britain too late for the Christmas post to be dispatched and arrive in time, Harry had no presents sent to him – although he did benefit from anonymous parcels sent to all British troops by wellwishers at home.

"I got nothing for Christmas; most of these guys got nothing for Christmas," he said with a shrug.

He did, however, have a chance to speak to his family over the festive period. As with all British troops, he was given an extra ten minutes' credit on his army satellite-phone account over the Christmas week as a Yuletide treat. Fob Delhi comes under attack several times a day from rocket-propelled grenades, mortar shells and machine-gun fire, and British troops operate out of old-fashioned trenches and bunkers.

But Harry said: "When you know you are with the Gurkhas, there's no safer place to be, really."

But asked if the base was a safe place for a prince, Major Mark Milford, of the 1st Battalion, the Royal Gurkha Rifles, replied matter- of-factly: "No, not really."

One of the observation posts, JTAC Hill, is built on the remains of a 19th- century fort, used by the British during a previous involvement in the seemingly perpetually war- torn country. The prince shared a room with a constantly changing con-tingent of Royal Artillery soldiers, alternating between stints up on JTAC Hill and the camp itself.

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

"I'm in here with all the guys; most of them are artillery guys basically doing a swap-over with the other ones on JTAC Hill, stagging on (performing guard duty], stagging off, doing a week because it's quite a lot of graft.

"It's good fun to be with just a normal bunch of guys, listening to their problems, listening to what they think. And especially getting through every day. It's not painful to be here, but you are doing a job and to be with such fantastic people, the Gurkhas and the guys I'm shar-ing a room with, makes it all worthwhile."

One good thing about Delhi is the standard of the food: the Gurkha fare is the envy of the Afghanistan theatre, with regular chicken or goat curries.

However, it has been important to try to keep news of the prince's deployment a secret, and other soldiers have been told not to mention him in their phone calls home.

Major Andy Dimmock, of 4th Regiment, Royal Artillery, who has spent the past six months attached to the Household Cavalry, said: "All the lads phone home as normal. We just say, 'Don't tell them who you are with'.

"We are not giving any special treatment to him. It's just a security risk, because if it gets out that he's here, the indirect fire threat will increase. At the moment, he's just the same as any other officer here."

Major Dimmock said there was a huge novelty factor in having a prince under his command, but he was now very much part of the team. And working closely with Harry, the major saw first-hand how he excelled in banter with pilots over the radio "net". But none of the pilots realised they were talking to the prince, they simply knew him by his call sign: "Widow Six Seven."