Defence Secretary accuses Prince Harry of 'boasting' about his Taliban kills
The Defence Secretary has accused Prince Harry of "boasting" about shooting dead 25 Taliban fighters while on tour in Afghanistan.
Ben Wallace said the Duke of Sussex had "let down" his former Army colleagues by talking about his kill count in his autobiography Spare.
Speaking to LBC's Nick Ferrari, the Secretary of State said: "I frankly think boasting about tallies or talking about tallies... it distorts the fact that the Army is a team game.
"It's a team enterprise... and so it's not about who can shoot the most or who doesn't shoot the most… That's just my personal view.
"If you start talking about who did what, what you are actually doing is letting down all those other people, because you're not a better person because you did and they didn't."
Mr Wallace, who served as an officer with the Scots Guards, said: "I think every veteran makes their own choices about what they want to talk about in their lives."
He is the most senior minister to speak out on the issue, which angered many from across the Armed Forces.
Earlier this year in January, Prince Harry opened up about his reasons for revealing how many Taliban fighters he had killed during his service in Afghanistan, saying it was part of a healing process and that he hoped talking about it would help others, including reducing veteran suicides.
He denied boasting about killing 25 Taliban while serving as a soldier when he appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in the US, telling the American talk show host that it had been "hurtful and challenging" watching the reactions following the publication of his book Spare.
His appearance on the show followed an earlier interview with People magazine in which he said he felt soldiers often discussed "parts of our service that still haunt us" and said that he is not sure if soldiers "ever fully reconcile the painful elements of being at war".
He told the magazine, in an interview published online, that he hopes that speaking about his own experiences of military service in Afghanistan, including taking lives, would help others, as he talked openly about his own healing journey.
The 38-year-old told Colbert on The Late Show: "Without a doubt, the most dangerous lie that they have told, is that I somehow boasted about the number of people that I killed in Afghanistan."
He noted the context in which the reference appeared in the book, before saying: "I should say, if I heard anyone boasting about that kind of thing, I would be angry. But it's a lie.
"My words are not dangerous, but the spin of my words are very dangerous."
Harry said he was driven to discuss his kills by the goal of reducing veteran suicides.
"I made a choice to share it because having spent nearly two decades working with veterans all around the world, I think the most important thing is to be honest and to give space to others to be able to share their experiences without any shame," he told Colbert.
"And my whole goal, my attempt with sharing that detail, is to reduce the number of suicides."
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