Tehran, IRNA – It’s hard to remember a time when Prince Harry didn’t make the headlines. The rabble-rouser Duke of Sussex has been constantly stirring the pot of controversy, from cheating in school to confessing to the killing of Taliban soldiers in Afghanistan.
Publishing a memoir at the rather young age of 38 is another sign that the British bad-boy, although resigned from his royal duties, is not done with media attention he clearly can’t have enough of.
In his memoir, ‘Spare’, which was sold in Spain before its official release and, thus, leaked to the British media, he reveals that he killed 25 people as an Apache helicopter pilot during his second tour in Afghanistan.
Harry was neither proud nor ashamed of the killings, as is said in the book. He did not think of those killed as “people,” but rather “chess pieces” that had to be removed from the board.
“Baddies eliminated before they could kill goodies,” was his notion regarding the Afghan combatants whom he killed: yet another oddity in the long list of the young Prince’s fiascos.
Now, perhaps to his liking, the Duke’s claim about the Afghan casualties has drawn much ire, as British veterans say that publishing head count violates an unspoken military code.
Colonel Tim Collins, commander of a battalion during the Iraq war told Forces News that Harry’s statement was at odds with the accepted behavior in the army, adding, “It’s not how we think.”
Another British military figure, Chris Parry called the claim “distasteful.”
The controversy surrounding the memoir of Britain’s prince is not limited to the shameful military confession. In the book, he “launches a series of incendiary accusations against members of his family,” revealing a number of “private confrontations between him and other senior royals and details his split from the family,” according to media outlets who obtained early copies of the book.
One of the most startling chunks of his memoir relates how Harry was at the receiving end of a physical assault by William at his Nottingham Cottage home in Kensington Palace during a row over Meghan Markle in 2019. Allegedly, William called Meghan “difficult”, “rude” and “abrasive”.
According to Prince Harry’s account, William grabbed him by the collar, “ripping my necklace” and knocked him to the kitchen floor. As a result, Harry landed on a dog bowl, breaking it, and sustained injuries to his back.
“He lay ‘dazed’ before getting up and ordering William to leave.” The Duke writes that his brother had egged him on to fight back, like they had done when they were children, only to be refused by Harry.
As Harry recalls in his memoir, William later returned feeling apologetic and regretful. Harry gave him a glass of water and says he told him: “Willy, I can’t speak to you when you’re like this,” using William’s pet nickname.
William reportedly said: “I didn’t attack you, Harold.”
Recounting his confrontation with William, Harry says William told him he did not need to tell “Meg” about this. Harry told his therapist first, but then Meghan noticed the scrapes and bruises on his back.
“She was terribly sad,” he writes.
Another bombshell in Harry’s arsenal was his decision to wear a Nazi uniform with a swastika to a fancy dress party in 2005. His move expectedly caused an outrage.
According to the US website Page Six, Harry claims he phoned William and Kate asking them if he should wear a pilot’s uniform, or a Nazi one, and they said the latter. Both howled with laughter, he said, when he later tried it on for them.
As far as the chess metaphor goes, Harry’s life seems to be filled with wrong moves. A person is allowed to make mistakes, but mistakes at Harry’s caliber will have costly consequences.
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