Prince Harry's shocking body count in Afghanistan
Prince Harry has gone into detail about his time in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban, revealing how many people he killed.
The Duke of Sussex served in two tours of Afghanistan: first as a forward air controller calling in air strikes in 2007-2008, then flying the attack helicopter in 2012-2013.
Detailing the war times in his highly anticipated memoir Spare, Harry shared he had killed 25 people, saying he is neither proud nor ashamed of “taking human lives” as it was simply his job as a soldier.
The prince says that he did not think of the 25 as “people” but rather “chess pieces” that had to be taken off the board.
He also saw the insurgents he killed as “baddies eliminated before they could kill goodies”, he writes.
Soldiers usually don't know how many people they have killed, but Harry alleged he watched footage of each of his kills when he got back to base to determine with certainty his death toll.
“My number is 25. It’s not a number that fills me with satisfaction, but nor does it embarrass me,” he says.
He said after leaving the military in 2015 that killing insurgents was part of his job, and that “we take a life to save a life”.
He justified his actions on the battlefield because of his memory of the 9/11 attacks in the United States, and the memory of meeting families of those who died.
Those responsible and their sympathisers were “enemies of humanity” and fighting them was an act of vengeance for a crime against humanity, he added.
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