Britain’s Prince Harry has reportedly revealed he killed 25 Taliban members while in Afghanistan and thought of his targets as “chess pieces”.
According to The Telegraph, Harry wrote in his soon-to-be-released autobiography Spare that he had been trained by the Army not to think of those he killed as “people”.
The newspaper quoted him as saying it was not possible to kill someone “if you see them as a person”.
The Telegraph reported that according to the book, while serving as an Apache helicopter pilot during his second tour of duty in Afghanistan Harry killed 25 Taliban members.
He was quoted as saying that “in the era of Apaches and laptops”, he was able to say “with exactness how many enemy combatants I 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 was further quoted as saying: “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.”
The paper said Harry wrote that his conscience was absolved by his abiding memory of witnessing al-Qaeda 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York on television while at Eton. The Telegraph said he viewed those responsible for the attacks and their allies as “enemies of humanity”.
The Taliban said at the time when Harry was serving in Afghanistan that it had instructed its commanders in the field “to do whatever they can to eliminate him”.
