Prince Harry's Friends Say His Royal Status Never Affected His Identity as a Soldier (Exclusive)

Two of the Duke of Sussex's pals, both former Invictus competitors, tell PEOPLE what drives Harry

Prince Harry’s friends who have been there since the start of the Invictus Games say that his fire for helping the veteran community has always burned bright, regardless of his royal status.

David Wiseman and JJ Chalmers are veterans of the British armed forces and former Invictus Games competitors who attended Service of Thanksgiving at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London on May 8 honoring the 10-year anniversary of the Invictus Games.

Wiseman and Chalmers, who were both involved with the leadership of the Invictus Games Foundation and appeared in the August 2023 Netflix docuseries Heart of Invictus, exclusively told PEOPLE about how it all never would have happened without the Duke of Sussex’s vision. 

Prince Harry is "the same as me and JJ, he was a combat soldier who did two tours. One on the ground and one in the air. He wasn’t messing around out there," Wiseman tells PEOPLE, referring to Harry’s decade of service in the British Army from 2005 to 2015 and two tours in Afghanistan.

"The identity of being a soldier doesn’t go away or change because you’re a prince or a duke. He feels that. He feels part of this community and we feel him as part of our community," Wiseman says. "That’s the passion and drives him in, wishing to serve this community. In terms of that vision — I was shot in the chest in 2009 and finally left the Army May 1, 2013. I think on May 15 I was on this tour with Prince Harry and called in to see the Warrior Games."

Related: Why the Royal Family Did Not Attend Prince Harry's Invictus Games Service in London

King Charles’ younger son has cited a May 2013 trip to the U.S. where he saw the adaptive sports tournament for wounded, ill and injured active duty and veteran U.S. military service members organized by the U.S. Department of Defense as the breakthrough inspiration to launch the Invictus Games, which Wiseman verifies came to be over breakfast the next day.

"He could see where this was going. He sat there, glass of orange juice in hand and created this vision. He said ‘This is mega. What we’re seeing here is brilliant but let’s take it back, let’s internationalize it, invite the world and the general public, put it in the Olympic Park and put it on the BBC and let’s have a huge closing concert and use it as a focal point to inspire the world,’ " he recalls. "He could see it on that very morning and that’s where he took us."

The inaugural Invictus Games were held at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London in September 2014. The anniversary service at St. Paul’s celebrated the decade of impact Invictus has had through sport, highlighted by six cycles of competition in London, Orlando (2016), Toronto (2017), Sydney (2018) and The Hague (2022, bumped from 2020 due to the pandemic) and Düsseldorf (2023). The latest Games welcomed 550 athletes from 21 countries across 10 sports, and the next event is set for Vancouver and Whistler, Canada in 2025 where winter sports will debut for the first time.

Chalmers says that while the reach has been massive, Prince Harry’s vision was simple.

Related: Prince Harry Reveals His Favorite Invictus Games Memory Involves a USA-UK Face-Off During London Visit

"As far as I can say, the Duke set out to do two things. Create a platform that could give us physical and mental recovery, and secondly, what we had learned about ourselves and more importantly, what we’d learned about disability and the world he could see this was an opportunity to educate and inspire people out with our community,” he says.

"That’s the service element of it. What he really set out to do by bringing those people to see it and giving us the stage was to basically bottle what we were all living. That’s where that ‘I Am’ and the name Invictus Games came from," he continued, referring to the William Ernest Henley poem that inspired the Invictus motto and was read at the Service of Thanksgiving.

Chalmers and Wiseman both joke that they could have come up with the idea but only one person could deliver it.

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"He could have done anything with his time, and his resource and his life. But he decided to commit it to others and to our community — a community that he’s part of," Chalmers says of Prince Harry’s platform. And I will be forever grateful that I got caught in the wake of that and got to be part of it and continue to be part of it."

Chalmers suffered life-threatening injuries while serving with the Royal Marines in Afghanistan, became captain for Team Great Britain’s trike cycling at the first event in 2014 and won a gold medal before becoming an Invictus Games Foundation trustee. Wiseman, meanwhile, helped helm the original executive team for the first Invictus Games and captained at Orlando 2016, and has clinched 14 medals.

"No one wants to see me in my Speedos anymore, " Wiseman jokes about his former Invictus sport of swimming. "My job now is to bring in more and more nations who have a closer proximity to not just conflict but deployment. Soldiers, sailors and airmen don’t just do fighting but do so much around the world to support us in the international community."

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