Prince Harry 'killed 25 people in Afghanistan'
Prince Harry has reportedly disclosed that he killed 25 people in his role as an Apache helicopter pilot during his second tour of duty in Afghanistan.
For the first time, the Duke of Sussex has reportedly discussed the number of Taliban fighters he killed during his military service, in his upcoming autobiography, Spare.
Prince Harry served in the Army for 10 years, undertaking two tours of Afghanistan and rising to the rank of captain.
The Telegraph, which obtained a Spanish language copy of the memoir from a bookshop in Spain, revealed that Harry wrote that flying six missions during his second tour of duty on the front line resulted in "the taking of human lives" of which he was neither proud nor ashamed.
He reportedly adds in his tell-all memoir 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 book comes within weeks of Harry and Meghan's controversial Netflix documentary – in which he revealed that spending 10 years in the British Army helped "burst" the bubble he grew up in.
In the third episode, Prince Harry expresses his gratitude for his service and the friends he made during that time because, despite being at war, it helped him experience a more normal life than he had up until that point.
His autobiography is due for publication on 10 January but has already gone on sale in Spain under the title of En La Sombra, which translates as "in the shadow".
The Telegraph has reported that when writing about his time in Afghanistan, Prince Harry describes watching footage of each "kill" when he returned to base, as a nose-mounted video camera on his Apache helicopter recorded each mission in full.
He reportedly writes that in the "din and confusion of combat," he saw the insurgents 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 says, according to the Telegraph, but the Army had "trained me to 'other' them, and they had trained me well".
'It's not a number that fills me with satisfaction, but nor does it embarrass me'
Prince Harry reportedly adds: "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."
He reportedly added 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."
Part of his reason for feeling no guilt about taking lives, he says, is that he never forgot being in the TV room at Eton, watching news coverage of the 9/11 attacks on New York.
According to reports, he goes on to describe 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.
The Prince does however reportedly note the only shots he thought twice about were the ones he had not taken, specifically highlighting the time he was unable to help his Gurkha "brothers" on an occasion when they were under fire from the Taliban and a communications failure meant he was not able to help them.
'We fire when we have to, take a life to save a life'
His first tour of duty in 2007/08 as a forward air controller in Helmand province was compromised after news leaked out on the internet that he had been secretly fighting the Taliban.
Then in 2012, after learning to fly Apache helicopters, he was deployed to Camp Bastion in southern Afghanistan with the Army Air Corps, staying for 20 weeks.
Reportedly he said that at the time killing insurgents was part of his job, and that "we fire when we have to, take a life to save a life".
At the time, it was widely reported that the Taliban had told its commanders in Helmand "to do whatever they can to eliminate him".
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