Prince Harry says he ‘thought of Taliban fighters as chess pieces, not people’

Duke of Sussex thought of Taliban fighters not as people but as chess pieces, he says in his memoir

Prince Harry has reportedly claimed he killed 25 people when he was an Apache helicopter pilot during his second tour of duty in Afghanistan.

The Duke of Sussex makes the claim in his memoir, Spare, which was due to be published next week but has been leaked and accidentally put on sale in Spain.

He flew on six missions that resulted in “the taking of human lives”, something of which he is neither proud nor ashamed.

In the heat of combat, the prince did not think of the 25 as “people” but instead as “chess pieces” that had been taken off the board, The Telegraph reported.

It is the first time the 38-year-old has revealed how many Taliban fighters he killed during his military service.

Prince Harry served in the army for 10 years, rising to the rank of Captain and undertaking two tours of Afghanistan.

The prince also claims in his autobiography that his brother, William, and Princess Kate encouraged him to dress up as a Nazi soldier – an incident he has called “one of the biggest mistakes in my life”.

Harry is reported by The Guardian to also say in the book that William physically attacked him during an argument in 2019 over the Duke of Sussex’s marriage to Meghan Markle, and he has now branded his brother, the Prince of Wales, his “archnemesis”.

His book, due for release on Tuesday, shows he has dedicated his memoir to his wife, children and his mother, Princess Diana.

Prince Harry in Helmand Province, Southern Afghanistan in 2008 (PA)

Harry served two tours of combat duty in Afghanistan (John Stillwell/PA) (PA Archive)

On his duty in Afghanistan, he describes watching video of each “kill” when he returned to base, as a nose-mounted video camera on his Apache helicopter recorded each mission.

Soldiers do not usually know how many enemies they have killed, he says, but “in the era of Apaches and laptops” he was able to say “with exactness” how many he 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,” he writes.

In the “din and confusion of combat” he saw the insurgents he killed as “baddies eliminated before they could kill goodies”, The Telegraph says.

The prince says he wanted to ensure he shot only Taliban fighters (Screengrab)

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”.

Harry writes: “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.”

Part of his reason for feeling no guilt about taking lives, he says, is that he never forgot watching news coverage of the 11 September attacks on New York, and later meeting the families of victims of the attacks on visits to America.

Harry said he feared Camilla might be a ‘wicked stepmother’ (Reuters)

He describes those responsible for the attacks and their sympathisers as “enemies of humanity”, and says that fighting them was an act of vengeance for one of the worst crimes in human history.

The only shots he thought twice about were the ones he had not taken, and in particular, being unable to help his Gurkha “brothers” once when they were under fire from the Taliban and a communications failure meant he was unable to help them.

Security experts say the prince is a potential terrorist target because of his military service, and revealing his personal tally of kills is likely to increase those fears.

The Taliban said at the time it had told its commanders in Helmand to do whatever they could “to eliminate him”.

Elsewhere in the book, Prince Harry reportedly compares his first meeting with his stepmother and Queen Consort Camilla to getting an “injection”.

He says he was fearful Camilla would be his and William’s “wicked stepmother”.