I remember reading somewhere that the reason Tom Clancy made Charles a character in "Patriot Games" was because he had talked to some people who had served with the Prince and the unanimous verdict was that he was a tough customer.
I can't tell you how much I appreciate Australia as an ally and how sorry I am for the losses you all have endured. May I ask what you did in the military?
I served with an Aussie captain, an exchange officer with the 380th Wing at Plattsburgh, New York. He had been a navigator (in your 707s, IIRC) and was serving as a nav on one of our KC-135 crews. He said that this exchange service was the first time he'd been in the U.S., and I asked "How have you found America so far?"
"Well," he replied, "I go to Hawaii and then I turn right."
Definitely.
I first encountered the Prince of Wales when I was still at school - he was sent out from England to spend a term at my school in Australia. I didn't have much direct contact with him - I was one of the youngest boys in the school, and he was one of the oldest and he also spent most of his time in the mountains where we had a bush campus, I suppose you would call it (which was the main reason he was sent here) but I did see him around. Timbertop (the name of the bush setting) was a place designed to basically make you tough - the school is extremely expensive, and attracts a lot of students from privileged backgrounds - sticking them out in the middle of nowhere for a year with no modern conveniences, where if they want a hot shower, they have to cut their own wood, where they learn to shoot so they can eat (not all the time - but it's a skill we learned) where you go on thirty mile hikes over mountains unaccompanied by adults - well, it's a real experience. He was sent there for a term. He asked to stay for a second term because he so loved that environment. He was no wimp even then.
A story I've heard several times - I can't vouch for it personally but I've heard it from a number of sources. In the mid 1980s, he and the Princess of Wales participated in an exercise designed to train elite troops (probably SAS but I don't know that) to perform a rescue of kidnapped royals. It was also intended to make sure the Princess knew what to do in such a situation. During the course of the rescue, the referees for the exercise 'killed' a helicopter crew to see how the troops would react to the loss of transport. To their surprise, the helicopter took off anyway.
When they investigated they found the Prince of Wales at the controls, and they complained that he'd disrupted the exercise. He was reportedly very unimpressed at their attitude and pointed out to them that he had been trained to fly helicopters and so he had done in the exercise exactly what he would have done in a real situation - he really resented the implication he should have sat back and done nothing.
I also have to say he impressed a lot of Australians back in 1994, when he was in Australia for Australia Day ceremonies. When he got up to speak at Darling Harbour in Sydney, shots were suddenly heard from the crowd as a young man rushed the stage. Fortunately he only had a starting pistol - but the Prince had no way of knowing that. But he stood his ground, and showed no fear.
He's a brave man who has spent his life serving his country in various roles. Yes, some of his views are a bit odd and his private life may not have been all that it should have been. But he's done his duty.
I can't tell you how much I appreciate Australia as an ally and how sorry I am for the losses you all have endured. May I ask what you did in the military?
A range of things. I was a Naval officer for just over twenty years and I had a fairly mixed career. I made the choice early in my career of trying to spend my career (in as much as you get a choice) serving on Australia's aircraft carrier and then we suddenly no longer had an aircraft carrier. I had quite of bit of service at sea as a seaman officer, including service on HMAS Brisbane in the first Gulf War, but also spent quite a lot of time in training, education, and administration.