Prince Harry has been inescapable in recent weeks as the quasi-royal makes the press rounds to promote his new memoir Reserve.
One of the more disturbing details the Duke of Sussex shared in his book concerned his time as a soldier in Afghanistan. Prince Harry served during the war in Afghanistan for ten years, beginning in 2007, eventually reaching the rank of Captain in the British Army. On his second deployment, he flew Apache helicopters.
In Reserve, Prince Harry revealed that he killed 25 people in Afghanistan — all members of the Taliban, he claimed. He called his victims “chess pieces taken off a board, bad guys eliminated before they kill the good guys,” and said he wasn’t “ashamed” of his actions because he had been conditioned by the military to feel nothing.
“You can’t kill people if you see them as people,” he wrote. “They trained me to ‘other’ them, and they trained me well.”
During a much-hyped appearance on Tuesday night on The Late Show with Stephen Colbertthe host asked Harry awkwardly about the controversial passage.
“What is also strange is that this is nothing new. Here’s an article from – I believe this is from Reuters — from ten years ago when you described killing Afghan insurgents, the Taliban, on missions,” Colbert said.
“Nearly a decade later, my face was in the front pages because while I was still in Afghanistan, someone asked me if I had killed someone from an attack helicopter. And I said ‘yes,'” Harry explained to the comic.
On why he chose to share these disturbing details in his memoir, Prince Harry, who has spent a lot of time helping injured veterans deal with PTSD — and has invited veterans to the Show up late taping – said it was all part of his mission to help struggling vets.
“I chose to share it because I have worked with veterans around the world for nearly two decades. I think the most important thing is to be honest and to be able to give space to others to share their experiences without any pity,” said Prince Harry. “And my whole goal and my effort to share that detail is to reduce the suicide rate.”
Prince Harry’s admission in his memoir that he killed 25 Afghan insurgents and described them as “chess pieces” has sparked a series of protests across Afghanistan – including at a local university in Helmand, the government reported. AP.
“The atrocities committed by Prince Harry, his friends or anyone else in Helmand or anywhere in Afghanistan are unacceptable, brutal. These deeds will be remembered by history,” said Sayed Ahmad Sayed, a professor at the university AP during the protest.
