PRINCE Harry is taking part in Army exercises on Salisbury Plain this week as he prepares for his deployment to Iraq.

Around 3,500 soldiers from 1 Mechanised Brigade will spend this week carrying out mock-up operations to simulate everything from routine patrols to arresting dangerous insurgents.

Harry will become the first royal in 25 years to be sent to a war zone when he heads to Basra, southern Iraq, with the Blues and Royals in the coming weeks for a six-month tour of duty.

Soldiers taking part in the exercises in Wiltshire had to suspend disbelief at times.

The "insurgents" who fired mortars at Army camps and launched roadside bombs at armoured vehicles were likely to be paratroopers recently returned from Afghanistan.

And snow flurries and bitterly cold winds today brought blizzard-like conditions to Salisbury Plain that are unlikely to be encountered in the baking heat of an Iraqi summer.

But the exercises have been designed to be as realistic as possible in order to prepare the soldiers for what they will face in Iraq.

The troops wear high-tech training equipment that minutely tracks their movements on computer screens and records whether they have been shot and how bad their wounds are.