He may be third-in-line to the throne, an army captain and responsible for attack helicopters, but Prince Harry was not exempt from making the tea in Afghanistan.
Losing the daily round of Uckers, a traditional military board-game, would consign the 28-year-old to a shift of servitude, at the beck and call of his bell-ringing comrades.
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“Whoever loses that becomes the ‘brew b****’, and then you have to make brews for everybody all day,” Harry said.
Captain Simon Beattie, Harry’s flight commander, explained the Uckers routine: “It’s always the thing we do first in the morning, with my flight. And the loser ends up being on call. We ring the bell and they make the brews, and for anyone that comes by.”
The four airmen in Harry’s team were so determined not to suffer the indignity of being the on-call servant, underhand tactics were not out of the question. Asked if it was particularly satisfying to force the prince to play butler, Capt Beattie beamed: “Absolutely. Especially when you’ve cheated the whole way round!”
Similar to Ludo, Uckers is traditionally a Royal Navy game, but is very popular in the Army Air Corps. Harry returned to Britain after a 20-week deployment in Afghanistan. u00a0 u00a0 u00a0
Off-duty
Prince Harry’su00a0off-duty time in Afghanistan appeared to be full of war movies, board games and candy trades.u00a0