British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace accused Prince Harry of "boasting" about the number of people he killed while serving in Afghanistan.
The Telegraph writes about it.
Ben Wallace said Prince Harryʼs revelations about the kill count in his memoirs "distort" the perception that the British Army is a team.
"I frankly think boasting about tallies…distorts the fact that the Army is a team game," the defense secretary said.
Prince Harry walks past an Apache helicopter at Camp Bastion in Afghanistanʼs Helmand province on October 31, 2012.
Getty Images / «Babel'»
Prince Harry has come under fire from senior military figures for revelations that he killed 25 Taliban fighters. Many warned that he had put his own safety, as well as the safety of others, at risk. The criticism from Ben Wallace came after former defense secretary Lord John Hutton called Prince Harryʼs comments "inappropriate and wrong" and called the revelation "a very serious mistake", adding that it was "not something we would expect from someone, who held managerial and responsible positions".
The 38-year-old Duke of Sussex wrote in his memoirs that in the heat of battle, he thought of the people he killed as "chess pieces" removed from the board, which he is neither proud of nor ashamed of. In an American talk show, he defended his decision to name the number of murders because he wanted to "give veterans a space to share their experience of serving in the army without shame."
"My whole goal and my attempt with sharing that detail is to reduce the number of suicides," he said, denying that he was "boasting" about the number.
- In 2012-2013, Prince Harry was an Apache combat helicopter pilot as part of a Royal Air Force contingent in Afghanistan. He served for 20 weeks at the Camp Bastion base in the Afghan province of Helmand.