According to The Telegraph, which obtained an excerpt from the book, Harry said the army taught him not to view members of the Taliban as people. He further stated that he is "neither proud nor ashamed” of his kill count as an Apache attack helicopter pilot.
Prince Harry in his upcoming memoir ‘Spare,’ wrote that he killed more than two dozen people in Afghanistan during his time as a soldier hunting Taliban extremists.
According to The Telegraph, which obtained an excerpt from the book, Harry said the army taught him not to view members of the Taliban as people. He further stated that he is "neither proud nor ashamed” of his kill count as an Apache attack helicopter pilot.
Harry, the Duke of Sussex, served in Afghanistan first as a forward air controller in air raids from 2007-2008, then flying the attack helicopter between 2012 and 2013.
The 38-year-old is due to release a book, Spare, in the next week, in which he revealed that he undertook six missions as a pilot that led to him “taking human lives”.
According to the report, Harry said he was neither proud nor ashamed of doing so. He also described eliminating the targets as removing “chess pieces” from a board.
“My number is 25. It’s not a number that fills me with satisfaction, but nor does it embarrass me,” he wrote.
The prince explained his justification for his actions because of the 9/11 attacks in the United States and meeting the families of the victims.
He said those responsible and their sympathisers were “enemies of humanity” and fighting them was an act of vengeance for a crime against humanity.
The US-led foreign forces withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021 after 20 years of military occupation that left tens of thousands of people dead, mostly civilians.
In the already controversial book to be published on January 10, Harry talked for the first time about the number of Taliban fighters he killed during his service.
Prince Harry's autobiography ‘Spare’ is not due out until next week but it dominated headlines on Thursday after a Spanish-language version of the memoir mistakenly went on sale.
The book was hurriedly withdrawn from shelves in Spain but not before copies were obtained by media outlets, who pored over its contents and published key excerpts.
They include how Harry was allegedly physically attacked by his older brother, Prince William, in a blazing 2019 row about his wife, Meghan Markle. He wrote that his fight with William came after his brother called Meghan "difficult", "rude" and "abrasive".
The memoir also touches on his strained relationship with his father, King Charles III, as well as disclosures about how he was told of the death of his mother Princess Diana in a car crash in 1997, and his use of cocaine as a teenager.