The second Prince Harry felt ‘nearer’ to his mom by following in her footsteps throughout landmine journey
Princess Diana made her historic four-day trip to Angola 28 years ago today, where she famously walked through an active minefield.
Wearing body armour, the royal calmly strode down a path surrounded by landmines from East Germany, Russia and China.
She also remotely detonated a live landmine, declaring ‘one down, 17 million to go’ as she pushed the button on January 15, 1997.
Her actions made headlines all over the world, and despite some criticism from politicians – who accused Diana of being ‘uninformed’ on the matter – marked the beginning of her mission to have the weapons banned around the world.
The Mail described her landmine walk as an effort to ‘focus worldwide attention on the menace of anti-personnel mines and the plight of their victims’, while Diana pledged: ‘All I am trying to do is help. I am trying to highlight a problem that is going on all around the world, that’s all.’
And it is a cause that, since Diana’s tragic death later that year, her son Harry has continued to triumph.
In August 2013, Harry made the same journey to Angola and followed in his mother’s footsteps by walking through a minefield.
Princess Diana walking in a landmine field in Angola in 1997, left, and Prince Harry reconnecting with her cause in 2019 at a different field in Angola, right
The Prince working with the Halo Trust in Angola back in 2013
He worked with the Halo Trust during his visit, the charity that Diana had launched her momentous appeal with.
Harry recalled in his 2023 memoir, Spare, how he replicated the experience, even detonating a landmine, and felt ‘closer’ to his mother after doing so.
He wrote: ‘Taking up her cause, detonating a landmine myself, made me feel closer to her and gave me strength and hope.’
However, he revealed: ‘I was deeply frustrated to learn from the charity’s executives and fieldworkers that the job she’d spotlighted, indeed the entire global crusade my mother had helped launch, was now stalled.’
The prince put it down to a ‘lack of resources, lack of resolve’.
He told of how the landmine issue had been Diana’s ‘most passionate cause at the end’, as the princess died in Paris just eight months later in August 1997.
But Harry also found the trip to be a ‘psychological, emotional minefield’ and struggled with his mental health as a result of the experience.
When he returned home, he reached out to his father Charles and explained how he had been suffering from panic attacks and anxiety.
The Princess of Wales’s historic walk near the minefield back in 1997
Harry walking through a minefield in similar protective gear to his mother in 2019
Diana talking with minefield victims in Angola in 1997
The Mail’s front page coverage of Diana’s historic trip
It was during Harry and Meghan’s 2019 royal tour of Africa that the prince recreated the iconic photographs of his mother’s 1997 landmine walk.
It was a different scene to the one the Princess of Wales had visited – as the field she trekked through was by then a ‘vibrant’ community with businesses and schools.
Harry sat beneath the Diana Tree, which is all that remains of the minefield and is a tribute to her efforts in the area. The prince praised the ‘wonderful transformation’ that had happened with the help of the Halo Trust.
He walked in an area near the south-eastern town of Dirico that had been an artillery base for anti-government forces in 2000.
He detonated an anti-personnel mine discovered earlier in the day in the partially cleared minefield.
Back in 1997, Diana met with various victims of landmine explosions, including 16-year-old Sandra Thijika.
The princess was brought to tears when she watched Sandra be measured for a prosthetic leg and later sat under a fig tree in an orthopaedic workshop in Luanda with the young girl, leading to the well-known photograph of their encounter.
The princess speaking with minefield victim Sandra Thijika, 16, in 1997
Harry meeting Sandra during his trip in 2019, who now has a daughter named after Diana
She told Harry she now had five children. The royal seemed taken aback and asked for their ages and she told him through an interpreter: ‘I have a daughter I named after Diana.’
Harry sounded a positive note, telling her: ‘Your children will be growing up to your age and there won’t be any landmines.’
In response to Harry’s pledge, Sandra said: ‘I’m very happy to hear him say that, it feels like the work in Angola will continue and we will be landmine-free.’
