Prince Harry says a “lot” of British soldiers didn’t “necessarily agree or disagree” with the invasion of Afghanistan by the West.
The Duke of Sussex, 38, claimed in his memoir ‘Spare’ he killed 25 enemy fighters during the two tours as a soldier he served in the country, but has now said his actions were a case of doing what he was told.
He told trauma expert Dr Gabor Maté, 79, in a livestreamed chat on Saturday (04.03.23) about the Afghan conflict: “One of the reasons why so many people in the United Kingdom were not supportive of our troops was because they assumed that everybody that was serving was for the war.
“But no, once you sign up, you do what you're told to do. So there was a lot of us that didn't necessarily agree or disagree, but you were doing what you were trained to do, you were doing what you were sent to do.”
Harry said in his autobiography, released in January, he considered his victims in Afghanistan “chess pieces” he took out rather than thinking of them as humans – a boast military experts said put a fresh target on his back from extremists.
Harry, known as Captain Wales in the army, was first deployed to Helmand province in Afghanistan as a forward air controller in 2007, but his first tour of duty was cut short when a magazine broke a media embargo by mistake.
The royal returned there in 2012 and after he learnt to fly Apache helicopters was deployed to Camp Bastion in southern Afghanistan in 2012 where he stayed for 20 weeks.
During his 2012 tour, Harry was based out of Camp Bastion as part of the 662 Squadron Army Air Corps and helped provide helicopter support to the International Security Assistance Force and Afghan forces throughout Helmand province.
He is said to have flown more than a hundred missions over 2,500 flying hours, providing surveillance, deterrence and close combat attack capabilities when required.
