The Duke of Sussex may have increased the risk of being targeted by Islamist terrorists by describing how he killed 25 Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
In his memoir, Harry said he regarded his victims as “chess pieces” and was neither proud nor ashamed of the killings. The prince, who trained as an army Apache helicopter pilot, said in his memoir that he flew on six missions that resulted in the “taking of human lives”.
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Harry also admits in Spare to taking cocaine and says that he lost his virginity to an older woman when he was 17, as well as writing that the Prince and Princess of Wales approved of him wearing a Nazi uniform to a party in 2005.
While many soldiers do not know how many enemies they have killed, Harry said in his memoir that “in the era of Apaches and laptops” he was able to say “with exactness how many enemy combatants I had killed”.
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He wrote: “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.” Harry added: “You can’t kill people if you see them as people”, so he regarded the Taliban fighters as “chess pieces removed from the board . . . bad guys eliminated”.
Afghanistan is back under the control of the Taliban after the withdrawal of British and US forces in 2021.
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It is unusual for British soldiers to publicly discuss the number of people they have killed in combat. Islamist terrorists who have carried out attacks in Britain have highlighted the deployment of the UK military in Afghanistan as justification for their actions.
Harry was first deployed to Helmand province in southern Afghanistan as a forward air controller in 2007. After he qualified as a co-pilot gunner in 2012, Captain Wales, as he was known, was deployed to Camp Bastion where he served for 20 weeks with 662 Squadron, 3 Regiment Army Air Corps.
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He provided helicopter support to the International Security Assistance Force and Afghan forces operating throughout Helmand province. He flew more than a hundred missions over 2,500 flying hours, providing surveillance with close combat attack capabilities.
Harry wrote that in the “din and confusion of combat” he saw the insurgents he killed as “baddies eliminated before they could kill goodies”.
It was not possible to kill someone “if you see them as a person” but the army had “trained me to ‘other’ them, and they had trained me well.
“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,” he wrote. “I wanted to return to Great Britain with all my limbs, but more than that I wanted to get home with my conscience intact.”
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Harry has started legal action against the Home Office regarding security arrangements for him and his family when they are in the UK.
The duke said he had “inherited a security risk at birth, for life” and highlighted his two tours of combat duty in Afghanistan.
He said that after ceasing to be a working member of the royal family, he was told that he would no longer receive the “same degree” of personal protective security when visiting from the United States, despite offering to pay for it himself.
Referring to the number of people he killed, Harry wrote: “Naturally, I would have preferred not to have that figure on my military resumé, or in my head, but I would also have preferred to live in a world without the Taliban, a world without war.”
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In the book, Harry also admitted using cocaine while a schoolboy at Eton because he wanted to “feel different”.
He claimed he had already been publicly shamed as the “drug-addled son” after being confronted on his father’s orders about smoking cannabis and drinking heavily.
He recalled taking cocaine during a shooting weekend at a house in the summer of 2002, substantiating long-running rumours in society circles about his use of the Class A drug.
“Since then I’d taken a few more lines,” he wrote. “It wasn’t that fun and it did not make me feel as happy as it seemed to make others but it did make me feel different and that was my main goal.
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“I was a 17-year-old willing to try almost anything that would upset the established order. At least that was what I was trying to convince myself of. By then I was just as capable of lying to myself as I had been to that staff member [whom he told that he had never taken cocaine].”
A year earlier Harry had been confronted several times about “experimenting” with cannabis at his father’s Highgrove home and drinking to excess at parties and a pub in Wiltshire.
Harry said it emerged that a senior figure at “the UK’s most important tabloid” had contacted his father at the end of 2001, saying the newspaper had evidence he had taken drugs, including at Highgrove and behind the Rattlebone Inn at Sherston, near Malmesbury.
The prince said he had been visited at Eton by “Marko”, a bodyguard formerly of the Welsh Guards with whom he had formed a close relationship. Marko said he had been “asked to find out the truth”. When Marko asked if he had taken drugs, Harry replied: “Lies. All lies.”
Marko told him the “principal driver” of the media strategy was an adviser “my father and Camilla had recently hired, the same one who had leaked details of our private meetings”.
Harry wrote: “That adviser, said Marko, had decided that the best approach to the case had been to sacrifice me. Thus at the stroke of a pen they would appease the journalist and improve my father’s reputation, which was at a low point . . . The adviser had discovered a silver lining, a little consolation prize for my father, now he would no longer be the unfaithful husband but the world would see him as a poor overwhelmed father who had to battle alone with a drug-addled son.”
Elsewhere in the book, he wrote that he lost his virginity aged 17 to an older woman who treated him “like a young stallion”.
Harry was at Eton when the act took place with an unidentified woman in a field behind a pub.
At the time he was part of the riding set based around Highgrove. He described the experience as “a humiliating episode with an older woman who was fond of horses who treated me like a young stallion”.
“I mounted her quickly after which she spanked my ass and sent me away,” he wrote. “One of my many mistakes was letting it happen in a field just behind a very busy pub. No doubt someone had seen us.”
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In another claim in Spare, Harry said that the decision that he should wear a Nazi costume to a fancy dress party in 2005 was his brother’s fault.
He claimed that the Prince and Princess of Wales “howled” with laughter when they saw the costume — a uniform from General Erwin Rommel’s German Afrika Korps with a swastika armband.
The resulting criticism and outrage is reported to have led to the start of the conflict between the brothers.
Harry and William had been invited to attend the party, which was held for Harry Meade, the son of the Olympic triple gold medallist equestrian, Richard Meade, in the grounds of the family’s country mansion.
Harry, then 20, visited Cotswold Costumes, a fancy dress rental shop, to choose an outfit for the party, which had the theme “natives and colonials” in January 2005. Harry describes struggling to choose between the uniform and a pilot’s outfit.
“I phoned Willy and Kate, asked what they thought. Nazi uniform, they said,” he wrote. When he returned home to Highgrove to try on the uniform they “both howled”, he said.
“Worse than Willy’s leotard outfit! Way more ridiculous! Which, again, was the point,” Harry wrote.
The brothers arrived at the party together with the Prince of Wales dressed in a skin-tight leotard with a leopardskin pattern and matching leopardskin tail and paws.
