'Baddies Eliminated Before They Could Kill’: Prince Harry Reveals Killing 25 In Afghanistan
The Duke of Sussex Prince Harry revealed in his memoir 'Spare' that he killed 25 people during his second Afghanistan deployment
The Duke of Sussex Prince Harry revealed in his memoir of killing 25 people during his Afghanistan tenure. Sharing details of his second deployment in Afghanistan for the first time in the memoir, the 38-year-old said he flew on six missions that resulted in ‘the taking of human lives’, something of which he is neither proud nor ashamed, according to the Telegraph report.
In his book, Spare, he writes that in the heat of combat, he did not think of the 25 as “people” but instead as “chess pieces” that had been taken off the board, the report stated.
Prince Harry's disclosure about the number of Taliban fighters he killed during his military service is likely to increase the threat to his personal safety. The Duke remains under the radar of Islamist terrorist organisations not only because of his Royal status but also because he served twice in Afghanistan. Last year, he also took legal action against the Home Office’s decision for not giving full police protection to him and his family at the time of visiting the UK.
The memoir went on sale in Spain from where the publication purchased a Spanish language copy from a bookshop.
His barrister pointed out he “does not feel safe” when he is in the UK after losing the taxpayer-funded security after he and his wife gave up Royal duties.
Describing his tenure in Afghanistan, the Prince said he watched the video of each “kill” when he returned to base as a nose-mounted video camera on his Apache helicopter recorded the mission.
He went on to add that in the “din and confusion of combat” he saw the terrorists he killed as 'baddies eliminated before they could kill goodies'. It is not possible to kill someone 'if you see them as a person' he said, but the Army had “trained me to ‘other’ them and they had trained me well”, he wrote, according to the report.
“I made it my purpose, from day one, to never go to bed with any doubt whether I had done the right thing… whether I had shot at Taliban and only Taliban, without civilians in the vicinity. I wanted to return to Great Britain with all my limbs, but more than that I wanted to get home with my conscience intact,” the report quoted Prince Harry as saying in the book.
He says that in war soldiers do not usually know how many enemies they have killed, but “in the era of Apaches and laptops” he was able to say “with exactness how many enemy combatants I had killed. And it seemed to me essential not to be afraid of that number”.
“So my number is 25. It’s not a number that fills me with satisfaction, but nor does it embarrass me,” he wrote.
On the feeling of no guilt about taking lives, he writes that he never forgot being in the television room at Eton watching news coverage of the 9/11 attacks in New York and later meeting the families of victims of the attacks on visits to America.
He describes those responsible for the attacks and their sympathisers as “enemies of humanity” and says fighting them was an act of vengeance for one of the worst crimes in human history.
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