Writing about his time in Afghanistan, Harry describes watching video of each “kill” when he returned to base, as a nose-mounted video camera on his Apache helicopter recorded each mission in full.
He says 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, but the Army had “trained me to ‘other’ them, and they had trained me well”.
Prince Harry patrols through the deserted town of Garmisir, Afghanistan in 2008.Credit:AP
“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 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.”
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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. He later met 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.
He writes that the only shots he thought twice about were the ones he had not taken, and in particular being unable to help his Gurkha “brothers” on an occasion when they were under fire from the Taliban and a communications failure meant he was unable to help them.
He complains about military bureaucracy, detailing an occasion when he witnessed around 30 Taliban blow up a truck and was denied permission to fire on the enemy.
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The prince was deployed as a forward air controller in Helmand province during his first tour of duty in 2007/08, which was cut short when foreign news organisations breached a news blackout that had been agreed with the British media.
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. He said at the time that killing insurgents was part of his job, and that “we fire when we have to, take a life to save a life”.
The Taliban said at the time that it had told its commanders in Helmand “to do whatever they can to eliminate him”.
Security experts have said Harry remains a top target for terrorists because of his military service, and the fact that he has chosen to reveal his personal tally is likely to increase those fears.
Writing about his military training, he reveals that he suffered from trench foot during an exercise in Wales when he slept in the open and was caught in a downpour.
“I noticed that my feet were burning”, he writes. “I sat on the floor, took off my right boot and sock and saw that the sole of my foot was raw.”
Another soldier told him he would not be able to carry on, and he went to a medical station where he was told he would have to pull out of the march, which left him “dejected, although, I’ll admit, also relieved”.
His sergeant, however, told him he should push on, so he taped up his feet and took “among the most difficult steps I have ever taken on this planet” to get to the finish.
The Telegraph, London
