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London: It was his grandmother, the Queen, who told Prince Harry he was to fulfil his dream of serving in a war zone.
And just months later, the third in line to the throne was firing a machine gun to repel a Taliban attack in Afghanistan, patrolling on the frontline in war-ravaged Helmand province, and calling in air strikes against enemy positions.
In the austere camp conditions, the Prince could not wash his clothes for a week or shower or a shave for days.
His mornings began with "stand to" before sunrise and he had to be ready to move at a moment's notice in case of a dawn attack. At night he slept in "shell scrapes" - holes in the ground the troops dug themselves.
But the Prince was in his element - mucking together with his comrades to fight "Terry Taliban and his mates", as he called them.
Prince Harry served as a battlefield air controller, at the heart of vital communications, and spoke for hours on the radio every day to pilots.
He was known to them simply by his call sign, "Widow Six Seven". To his Army colleagues he was known simply as Harry Wales. It was this relative anonymity in a distant war zone he enjoyed most.
On arrival in Afghanistan in mid-December, the Prince was flown straight to Forward Operation Base Dwyer - "Fob Dwyer" - a dusty and isolated desert outpost about 10 kilometres from the front line.
It was a baptism of ice, rather than fire.
Temperatures at night plunged way below zero, there was no heating in sleeping areas, almost no running water and little shelter.
During the heat of battle it was the Prince who would call in and give final clearance for air strikes on Taliban targets.
He was responsible for providing cover for troops on the frontline as a Forward Air Controller (FAC) - often referred to by the American term JTAC (Joint Terminal Attack Controller).
Every day he would sit in a small operations room, scrutinising hours of surveillance footage beamed from aircraft flying over enemy positions to a laptop terminal, known as "Taliban TV" or "Kill TV".
He also had the responsibility of preventing friendly fire deaths and setting co-ordinates for bomb drops. Within days of his arrival, the Prince was ordered forward to the town of Garmsir, on the southernmost front line, to serve alongside an attachment of Gurkha troops.
His immediate boss, Major Mark Milford, the officer commanding B Company of the 1st Battalion, the Royal Gurkha Rifles, described it as the "sharp end". He said: "This is the southern border for the coalition troops, this is about as dangerous as it can get."
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