PRINCE HARRY WELCOMES VETERANS TO BUCKINGHAM PALACE

PRINCE HARRY WELCOMES VETERANS TO BUCKINGHAM PALACE



Prince Harry held his first Buckingham Palace garden party today while his grandmother, the Queen, was away - and passed his royal rite of passage with flying colours.

The 32-year-old prince invited 2,500 members of the Not Forgotten Association to enjoy tea and cakes on the lawn of the royal residence and set about, it seemed, trying to shake the hands of each and every one.

The Not Forgotten Association is a unique national tri-service charity which provides entertainment and recreation for the benefit of both serving and former wounded, injured, sick or disabled for ex-service men and women.

After standing to attention for the playing of the National Anthem, Harry ploughed into the crowd.

Among those he first met was Martin Wilson, 44, formerly of 2 Para, who recently completed the gruelling Marathon Des Sables, widely considered to be the toughest race on earth, just six years after he was shot in the head in Afghanistan and had to learn to walk, talk and speak again.



The race is the equivalent of running six marathons over five days - all in the Sahara desert, battling temperatures of 50C, 122F.

Colour Sergeant Wilson, a sniper commander, had just undertaken a gruelling three-day mission with not a wink of sleep, when he finally made the safety of a compound.

Just seconds after removing his helmet, he was hit in the head by a '762' calibre bullet - 'that's a big one' he said, wryly - and suffered catastrophic injuries which have left him with a titanium plate in his skull.



He suffered immense problems in Morocco as the plate expanded in the heat but still insisted to Harry of the race: 'I really enjoyed it.'

He said afterwards: 'Harry told me how much he would love to do the race too if his security were to allow it.'

He described the help of the NFA as 'unbelievable.'



Jack Cummings, 28, from Didcot near Oxford was greeted warmly by the prince who had seen him only hours earlier at the launch of his UK Invictus Games Team as the former bomb disposal team member will be competing at the competition in archery.

'How did you get changed and get here so quickly? ' asked Harry, The double amputee, missing both his legs, was on his second tour of Afghanistan when he suffered what he describes as 'a bad day at the office.'

'I was out looking for IUDs. Unfortunately one found me before I found it, ' he said, laughing.

His injuries were so catastrophic that his family and girlfriend Sarah Hoare - whose RAF officer father organised Jack's transport home to the UK - were told that he was going to die.



'I was drifting in and out of consciousness, my team were slapping me in the face to keep me awake. They used all the blood in the hospital in Basra on me and when I was flown back to the UK my parents were told to only pack an overnight bag as I was coming home to die. And yet somehow I am still here.'

He added: 'It's been difficult, I’m not going to lie. I have my bad days. I joined the army at 16, it was all I wanted to do. And then this. I still get people staring at me when I go down the street and see children whisper. I just have to put on the blinkers and shut it out.

'Sarah and I had only been together a year when it happened and I wouldn't have blamed her for walking away. It's been hard on her. But here we are and we are going to get married in August.

'Prince Harry asked me if Invictus was going to be our honeymoon, but I've got to do better than that!

He said the NFA first contacted him and arranged for him to go to watch the tennis at Wimbledon, a childhood dream of his. 'I now I find myself here, at Buckingham Palace, for this. I just unbelievable. But it's not just going to something like this, it's being with people like me, people who understand what I have been through. It's the sense of camaraderie. '

There were also several older war veterans introduced to the prince, including the remarkable Dr William Frankland - a mere 105.

He was a newly qualified doctor when war broke out and serving as a member of the Army Medical Corps when he was put in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Singapore for three and a half years in 1947.



It is an experience so horrific that he never spoke a word of it to his family until just seven years ago.

'When I came back I vowed not to dwell on the past and concentrate on the future,' said Dr Frankland, who, remarkably, credits his years of starvation as one of the reasons for his remarkable longevity.

Harry was told how he had gone on to become one of the world's leading allergists - he still write for the Lancet - and even treated Sadam Hussein.

Dr Frankland, now a grandfather ten times over, later explained with a twinkle in his undimmed eyes: 'He was my most grateful patient. '



He continued: 'I can't quite remember the year now but he had only been the official leader of Iraq for a matter of months. He was suffering badly from hay fever and asthma and I was asked to fly