Prince William (22 page)

The bulk of William's year was divided between an eleven-week expedition to Chile with Raleigh International, followed by a brief spell working as a farm labourer and then on to three and a half months in Africa, which he fell in love with.

Raleigh had been his father's idea. Charles had been in at the beginning of the organisation, under the name Operation Raleigh, in 1984, along with the explorer Colonel John Blashford-Snell. It was a larger, more ambitious version of a venture called Operation Drake, both of which took young people from a mixture of countries and backgrounds, put them on a magnificent 1,900-ton schooner that they had to learn to sail, and gave them the chance to explore the world, do some good, face challenges and discover their potential. Since then, they had done away with the ship and changed the name but the vision remained the same.

William's involvement began with a call from Mark Dyer to Raleigh's then chief executive, Jamie Robertson-Macleod. He was ringing, he said, on behalf of Prince William, who wanted to hear more about the organisation and asked whether he might go down to Eton and make a presentation. He had been told by Mark to make it sound tough, and when he arrived at Manor House and was met by Andrew Gailey, Mark and the Prince, he'd pulled no
punches. This was no holiday, he said. It was a rich mix of people and the mix was very important to Raleigh, demonstrating that everyone possessed inherent capabilities and deserved opportunities. ‘William looked concerned about how tough I had made it sound,' says Jamie. ‘But Chile is the toughest; it's remote and has changeable conditions. In their summer you can get whipping wind and cold conditions that could lead to hypothermia in short order.'

After the presentation he was sworn to secrecy. ‘If it gets out,' he was told, ‘William won't go.' But William did go, and shortly afterwards Malcolm Sutherland, who worked as an expedition leader for Raleigh, was asked to go to St James's Palace to meet him to discuss the finer details. Sutherland had spent seven years in the Parachute Regiment, and since leaving the Army had worked for Raleigh in Namibia, China and Mongolia.

‘When I met William,' says Malcolm, ‘he was in jeans and T-shirt – scruffy – he'd just been dragged out of bed and had driven up from Highgrove to St James's Palace for the briefing and chat, and he was sitting there with his cup of tea and his Sunblest white bread toast. You'd expect it to be better than that, but that's what it was, and it was actually very refreshing. You thought, Great, normal boy. It was in a little sitting room upstairs, tiny, all very casual, with computer games in the corner. It was quite surreal.

‘He was apprehensive I think, keen to find out what life was going to be like, what the living conditions would be like, how rough was it going to be.' The answer was that it would be very rough. They might be living in tents or they might be camped out on a kitchen floor in a community project with twelve or fourteen bodies on mats and sleeping bags. It was going to be basic, one loo for everyone. ‘I felt that giving him a taste of what to expect and the things to think about before he came and equipment that would make life easier was important. Also talking about the people that came on expeditions, there was a real mix, a diversity of people. There's a preconception that most people that come are middle class, and there are a lot, but there's also a lot of people who come through the Youth At Risk programme, and that is one of the most
fulfilling elements of it. It's quite an interesting dynamic: you take these people and mix them with everyone else, who are a pretty diverse mix anyway, both in nationalities and types of people. Put them in this close environment and tell them to work together, to talk about things and work through problems. It could be very hard at times and often the projects were hard but they were also very rewarding; but the challenge could often be just to make it happen within the group itself.'

William flew out to Santiago, the capital of Chile, separately from the rest of the venturers. He was very apprehensive. This was the first time he had spent any significant time away from his family and the comforts of home and he was stepping into completely unknown territory. He knew none of the people in the group, with the exception of Malcolm, and would be with a mix of backgrounds and nationalities he had no experience of. It was not surprising he kept his head held down and appeared shy and rather quiet to begin with. Mark travelled with him and stayed for the first few days, and he had two PPOs, which was reassuring, but they kept a distance; he knew he had to crack this on his own.

Before any venturer arrives at their destination they need to raise about £3,000 to pay for their trip. William had raised five times that amount by playing in a polo match, for which his friends and others had sponsored him. It was one of those occasions when being second in line to the throne isn't such a handicap.

From Santiago the venturers flew to Coihaique in Patagonia, in the south of the country, two and a half hours away, where Raleigh had set up a permanent base and where they spent the next four days being trained for the challenges ahead. All they knew was that there would be an environmental project, a community project and an adventure that would be chosen for them, and that they would be split into different groups of eleven for each. The induction involved basic first aid – although a medic travelled with every group – and radio communications, so they could send twice-daily reports back to base, where there was twenty-four-hour back-up. They were also given an understanding of the local culture and
some cooking lessons. Supplies were provided but it was up to the venturers to turn them into something edible, which at times was the biggest challenge of all.

William's first three weeks were the most difficult of the entire trip, both physically and psychologically. His group was sea-kayaking over very long distances in two-man kayaks carrying all their food and water, each day taking it in turns to be team leader and taking on the various other duties. At night they camped on the shoreline. ‘The sea kayaking was probably the biggest shock to his system,' says Malcolm. ‘He'd just arrived and was thrown straight into it and it was physically hard, the conditions were tough – it was the worst weather we had on the whole expedition and sometimes it was pretty precarious, they were on small rocks on the sea shore. Sometimes it was impossible to put tents up and they would use big tarpaulins and get in there like sardines because that was the best way of doing it.'

Sleeping cheek by jowl under a tarpaulin with strangers is not fun for anyone, particularly someone as private as William, but worse was to come. The weather turned extremely nasty; a massive belt of low pressure came in over the southern tip of Chile and brought driving rain and icy winds. The party was stranded on a beach for five nights while the storm raged over their heads and threatened to blow away their tents. They were soaked to the skin, and bitterly cold, with no way of getting dry or warm. ‘It was pretty grim,' says Malcolm, with all the understatement of an ex-Para. ‘There's no doubt about it, everyone found it tough.'

Not surprisingly, one of the party lost the plot. He was an English boy from a Youth at Risk programme, with a typical profile: serious family problems, a history of drugs and no experience of life outside the deprived squalor of the inner city where he was born. Cold and frightened, as they probably all were, in a wild and hostile coastline on the other side of the world, he lashed out, shouting and swearing aggressively. It was a shocking and intimidating display.

No one knew how to handle the situation, but to Malcolm's surprise, the one who defused it was William. ‘It was great to see
him realising that something had to be done and instead of going into his shell, as lots of people did, he energised the group, tried to keep things going, had a joke. Every project group relies on people like that and I would not have predicted that he would be the man to deal with people like that in those situations, definitely not, so it was incredible. You would expect someone like William to take a step back and not get involved and let someone else deal with it. But he connected with that boy and was the only person that could. He told him to sort himself out but in such a way that they became very good friends afterwards. William became the only person the guy would want to talk to if there were issues – he acted as a sort of go-between. He didn't have to do that, and I don't think I could have done it at that age; to be able to go to an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old with a shaved head, who'd had a hell of a tough upbringing and a drug issue and who was really, really angry.

‘It was very impressive and it surprised a lot of people as well, but he got so much respect from that – he got so much respect anyway, because people liked him. I can't imagine anyone not liking William. He was just fantastic.'

The next three weeks were spent in a small coastal village called Tortel, with no more than a few hundred people. ‘We never told anyone where he was going; the whole aim was to ensure his life on expedition was just like anyone else's, yet everyone knew who he was – even in the smallest Chilean communities. He must have been the most famous young boy in the world. People would gawp but they were pretty respectful. Tortel was built on a very steep slope that made movement around the village very difficult. They relied on wooden walkways and part of the work the venturers were brought in to do was to construct more walkways. As with every Raleigh project, the need is identified by local government, which brings in experts from the UK to work alongside local experts. The venturers provide the labour. But it wasn't all hard graft. Their other task in Tortel was to help out in the primary school, where William was in his element.

‘Again, I would never have predicted it, but the way he interacted with the kids was amazing. He was completely and utterly at one with himself and happy to be with them and to make a fool of himself and look silly; there was no pretence, it made him flower, it was his true self popping out. That was the one time his smile was non-stop, he was buzzing, he was natural, he was jumping around as if nobody was watching him. Most people are not quite as animated as he was. He was teaching a bit of English, playing games, drawing animals on a blackboard and writing the English name next to them; his drawings weren't too great and everyone was laughing at that. It's not everyone's natural environment but he was just great. Also, there was a local radio station in the village and he was the DJ for a moment and he loved it, choosing records, doing the chit-chat. Those were the times when he really got connected with the community.'

It was in Tortel that he agreed to do a dreaded photo call. The media had agreed to stay away while he was in Chile, in return for decent access and good photo opportunities at some stage during the eleven weeks. Colleen Harris, who after Sandy Henney's departure became Press Secretary, kept the numbers to the bare minimum, which she knew would work best; one television cameraman, one stills photographer and a reporter from the Press Association who conducted the interview. Mark Dyer travelled out with them. It turned out to be a public relations triumph. Compelling photographs of William filled the newspapers for two days and the film footage ran on the TV news. He was praised for his ‘humility' and ‘willingness to muck in with fellow volunteers' and for his ‘caring touch', as he was seen on all fours cleaning the communal loo, and making porridge that he declared was the worst porridge he had ever tasted in his life. ‘Here you are actually making a difference to other people's lives,' he said. It went down a storm.

The press kept to their side of the bargain, with one exception.
OK!
magazine had employed a local man from the mountains who was able to find the group, but the first anyone knew about it was
when a photograph taken with a long lens appeared in the magazine.
OK!
was swiftly jumped on by the PCC.

The final three-week project took them away from the coast, working with the Chilean government's National Forestry Corporation (CONAF) and experts from the Natural History Museum in London on a study of the Huemul deer to try to prevent its extinction. It was once so common in Chile that in the late eighteenth century it was added to the national coat of arms, but loss of habitat and the introduction of red and fallow deer to the country in 1800, as well as hunters killing them for food, had brought about a serious decline in numbers. The study focused on the animals' behaviour and natural habitat and involved identifying, tagging and tracking a small number of deer to establish where they went and what they ate.

‘William loved that whole element of living out of a tent in the middle of nowhere, tracking, monitoring and working with these deer,' recalls Malcolm. ‘I think he could relate to it, he'd been involved in deer management up in Balmoral and could see the whole purpose. In the UK there are far too many deer but in Chile a management plan was needed to ensure that not too many were being shot by locals. So it was about educating locals as well as protecting the animals.' It was a theme William met again on the next leg of his gap year, in Africa, and one which fascinated him.

At the end of the eleven weeks there was a giant party back at base before everyone climbed onto their different planes and returned to their vastly differing lives. They had eaten porridge for breakfast, dry biscuits for lunch with a shared tin of sardines, if they were lucky, and supper was dehydrated more times than it was fresh. ‘For certain projects we had Army rations but most of the time it wasn't as nice as that,' says Malcolm. And for eleven weeks there had been not a drop of alcohol. But at the party …

‘He had a lot of steam to get rid of. You don't need that many beers to feel the effect, and he got on the plane with a very sore head. It was a massive blow-out, lots of energy, lots of relief, dancing and people swinging from the rafters – and he was one of them.