Prince Harry leaves Afghanistan after foreign media trash his cover

British Army chiefs have decided to fly Prince Harry home from Afghanistan after the secret came out on Thursday that the prince, third in line to the throne, has been fighting on the frontline in Helmand province. Harry, a lieutenant in the Blues and Royals regiment, has been serving since Christmas alongside members of the Gurkha Rifles, sometimes only a few hundred yards from Taliban positions.

The prince had jokingly been nicknamed the 'bullet magnet' by Army colleagues. Now the Chief of the Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, and the head of the Army, General Richard Dannatt, have made the decision to pull him out. The risk to the prince and his colleagues of allowing him to remain in the war zone was considered too great.

The fact that Harry was in Afghanistan was known only to a handful of journalists, editors and broadcasting executives, as well as a small team inside the Ministry of Defence. The journalists had agreed to abide by a news blackout and in return were allowed to visit and film the prince on the frontline in January, on condition that they observed an embargo until his scheduled return in April.

But after only ten weeks of his planned four-month tour, the Australian magazine New Idea broke the news, and the Drudge Report repeated it online.

After the Ministry of Defence and Buckingham Palace were forced to admit on Thursday afternoon to Harry's tour of duty, journalists who visited him last month in Helmand have been discussing what they found - evidently, a contented 23-year-old who was finally able to fight alongside his men, having been refused permission to serve in Iraq last year.

Harry has been working as a Forward Air Controller, responsible for calling in air power on Taliban targets. Asked how his grandmother, the Queen, had reacted to his news, he explained: "She actually told me... She told me I was on my way to Afghanistan."

Robert Fox, The First Post's defence correspondent, said on Thursday that the arrangement between the press and the MoD was highly unusual, "because it is well known that a British general in Iraq refused to take the prince last year because he was not interested in what he called celebrity warfare."

Harry told reporters that if he had not been able to serve this time, he would have seriously questioned whether it was worth staying in the Army. He told one journalist how much he was enjoying serving with his men, and that "I hope to be here a lot longer." That was not to be.