Secretary of Defence accuses Prince Harry of ‘boasting’ about war killings

Ben Wallace says time in the armed forces iss not measured by 'who can shoot the most or who doesn’t shoot the most'

Prince Harry during an early morning pre-flight check at Camp Bastion, Afghanistan. AP

Prince Harry has let down military personnel by “boasting” about the number of people he killed in Afghanistan, British Secretary of Defence Ben Wallace said on Thursday.

He said success in the armed forces was not measured by “who can shoot the most”.

Mr Wallace, a former captain in the Scots Guards, criticised Harry, Duke of Sussex, over sections of his memoir, Spare, that revealed details of his tours of duty in Afghanistan.

In a wide-ranging interview on LBC, Mr Wallace also said that the war in Ukraine could last another year and that east European Nato countries may be the first to supply Ukraine with fighters jets.

“The armed forces is not about a tally,” Mr Wallace said. “I frankly think boasting about tallies or talking about tallies … distorts the fact that the army is a team game.”

He said the military is a “team enterprise” and each person in combat was supported by “hundreds of people behind them”.

“If you start talking about who did what, what you are actually doing is letting down all those other people, because you’re not a better person because you did and they didn’t,” he added.

Mr Wallace said each military veteran must “make their own choices about what they want to talk about”.

• 

  The first copies of Prince Harry's new book Spare are unpacked during a midnight sale at a book shop in London. EPA

• 

  After months of anticipation and a sustained publicity blitz, Prince Harry's book is on sale in the UK. AFP

• 

  Photographers surround a trolley containing copies of Spare. PA

• 

  Caroline Lennon, the first customer to purchase a copy of Spare, poses for photographers at Waterstones in Piccadilly, London. PA

• 

  There is no mention of royal family members in the foreword to Spare. AP

• 

  The book reveals that Prince Harry took cocaine and magic mushrooms. Reuters

• 

  Spare also lifts the lid on the prince's relationships with the royal family. EPA

• 

  The book contains allegations of racism within the royal family and accounts of a fight with Prince William. AFP

He also said a person’s time in the armed forces was not measured by “who can shoot the most or who doesn’t shoot the most”.

The Duke of Sussex’s wrote in Spare that he had killed 25 Taliban soldiers.

In Spare he described how the gunship’s nose camera recorded missions, which included the Taliban killings.

He regarded the insurgents as “chess pieces removed from the board” and said the army trained him to think it was not possible to kill someone “if you see them as a person”.

Prince Harry wrote that most soldiers don't know exactly how many kills they have to their credit.

“Under battle conditions, you often fire indiscriminately,” he says.

But “in the era of Apaches and laptops”, he was able to say “exactly 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 also criticised for the passages when Spare first went on sale.

Senior officers told The National that Prince Harry “betrayed the fighting ethos” of the British Army.

“Bragging about how many enemy soldiers you can have killed is simply not what British soldiers do,” a senior officer told The National.

Tory MP Tobias Ellwood suggested that the Duke of Sussex’s admission could create security risks for the Invictus Games, founded and promoted by Prince Harry.

Mr Ellwood, a senior backbencher and chairman of the Commons Defence Committee, said the revelation in Harry’s memoir was “ill-advised”.