Prince Harry’s former military commander recently accused the member of the British royal family of turning against his biological family, as well as his military family, after how the prince portrayed his military service in his new book “Spare.”
In his book, Prince Harry described his 10 years of service in the British Royal Army, including two tours of duty in Afghanistan. Commenting on his second tour of Afghanistan in 2012, as an Apache attack helicopter co-pilot and gunner, Prince Harry claimed to have killed 25 Taliban fighters.
“It wasn’t a statistic that filled me with pride but nor did it make me ashamed,” Prince Harry’s book reads. “When I was plunged into the heat and confusion of battle, I didn’t think about those as 25 people. You can’t kill people if you see them as people. In truth, you can’t hurt people if you see them as people. They were chess pieces taken off the board, bad guys eliminated before they kill good guys. They trained me to ‘other’ them and they trained me well.”
Reacting to the royal’s claims, his former commander, retired British Army Col. Tim Collins, told Britain’s Forces.Net, that Prince Harry had “turned against” the military while in pursuit of fame and personal enrichment with his new tell-all book.
Collins said the practice of keeping count of enemies killed is “not how you behave in the Army; it’s not how we think.”
“We don’t do notches on the rifle butt. We never did,” Collins added.
Collins said the British Army was in Afghanistan to assist the western-backed Afghan government as part of a lawful military intervention “with the best of intentions.”
“We lost people dead and insurgents also died – as did some innocents caught in the conflict. But that was a regrettable consequence of a lawful intervention with the best intentions,” Collins said.
“Harry has now turned against the other family, the military, that once embraced him having trashed his birth family,” Collins said. “He has chosen a path that is alien to us in the U.K. and the Commonwealth, pursuing U.S. identity politics and casting slurs or racism around where none exists in any manner comparable to the U.S.A.”
“I wonder whose path he has chosen? In the end, I see only disappointment and misery in his pursuit of riches he does not need and his rejection of family and comradely love that he badly needs,” Collins added.
