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40.

Soon after we returned to Britain the Palace announced that Willy was going to marry.

November 2010.

News to me. All that time together in Lesotho, he’d never mentioned it.

The papers published florid stories about the moment I realized Willy and Kate were wellmatched, the moment I appreciated the depth of their love and thus decided to gift Willy the ringI’d inherited from Mummy, the legendary sapphire, a tender moment between brothers, a bondingmoment for all three of us, and absolute rubbish: none of it ever happened. I never gave Willy thatring because it wasn’t mine to give. He already had it. He’d asked for it after Mummy died, andI’d been more than happy to let it go.

Now, as Willy focused on wedding preparations, I wished him well and turned sharply inward.

I thought long and hard about my singlehood. I’d always assumed I’d be the first to be married,because I’d wanted it so badly. I’d always assumed that I’d be a young husband, a young father,because I’d resolved not to become my father. He’d been an older dad, and I’d always felt that thiscreated problems, placed barriers between us. In his middle years he’d become more sedentary,more habitual. He liked his routines. He wasn’t the kind of father who played endless rounds oftag, or tossed a ball until long after dark. He’d been so once. He’d chased us all overSandringham, making up wonderful games, like the one where he wrapped us in blankets, like hotdogs, until we screamed with helpless laughter, and then yanked the blanket and shot us out of theother end. I don’t know if Willy or I have ever laughed harder. But, long before we were ready, hestopped engaging in that kind of physical fun. He just didn’t have the enthusiasm—the puff.

But I would, I always promised myself. I would.

Now I wondered: Will I?

Was that the real me who made that promise to become a young father? Or was this the realme, struggling to find the right person, the right partner, while also struggling to work out who Iwas?

Why is this thing, which I supposedly want so badly, not happening?

And what if it never happens? What will my life mean? What will my ultimate purpose be?

War, I reckoned. When all else failed, as it usually did, I still had soldiering. (If only I had adeployment date.)

And after the wars, I thought, there will always be charitable work. Since the Lesotho trip, I’dfelt more passionate than ever about continuing Mummy’s causes. And I was determined to takeup the cause Mike gave me at his kitchen table. That’s enough for a full life, I told myself.

It seemed like serendipity, therefore, like a synthesis of all my thinking, when I heard from agroup of wounded soldiers planning a trek to the North Pole. They were hoping to raise millionsfor Walking With The Wounded, and also to become the first amputees ever to reach the Poleunsupported. They invited me to join them.

I wanted to say yes. I was dying to say yes. Just one problem. The trek was in early April,dangerously close to Willy’s announced wedding date. I’d have to get there and back with nohitches, or risk missing the ceremony.

But the North Pole wasn’t a place you could ever be sure of getting to and from withouthitches. The North Pole was a place of infinite hitches. There were always variables, usuallyrelated to weather. So I was nervous at the prospect, and the Palace was doubly nervous.

I asked JLP for his advice.

He smiled. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Yes. It is.

You’ve got to go.

But first, he said, there was one other place I needed to go.

In a direct continuation of conversations he and I had begun five years earlier, after my Nazidebacle, he’d organized a trip to Berlin.

And so. December 2010. A bitterly cold day. I put my fingertips to the bullet holes in the city’swalls, the still-fresh scars from Hitler’s insane vow to fight to the last man. I stood at the formersite of the Berlin Wall, which had also been the site of SS torture chambers, and swore I couldhear the echoes of agonized screams on the wind. I met a woman who’d been sent to Auschwitz.

She described her confinement, the horrors she saw, heard, smelt. Her stories were as difficult tohear as they were vital. But I won’t retell them. They’re not mine to retell.

I’d long understood that the photo of me in a Nazi uniform had been the result of variousfailures—failure of thinking, failure of character. But it had also been a failure of education. Notjust school education, but self-education. I hadn’t known enough about the Nazis, hadn’t taughtmyself enough, hadn’t asked enough questions of teachers and families and survivors.

I’d resolved to change that.

I couldn’t become the person I hoped to be until I changed that.