‘Revealing Taliban kill count was part of my healing journey’

THE Duke of Sussex has said that he shared his Afghanistan kill count in his memoir for his own “healing journey”.

Prince Harry told People magazine that silence had been “the least effective remedy” for him and that he hoped that revealing his experiences in the military would help others.

He claimed in his book, Spare, to have killed 25 Taliban fighters during his second tour of Afghanistan, saying he thought of them as “chess pieces” that had been taken off the board.

It was the first time the 38-year-old has discussed the number of people he killed during his military service and he writes that he is neither proud nor ashamed of his actions.

In an interview with the American magazine published on the day Spare was released, he said: “I don’t know that you ever fully reconcile the painful elements of being at war. This is something each soldier has to confront … we often talk about the parts of our service that haunt us – the lives lost, the lives taken.

“There’s truly no right or wrong way to try and navigate these feelings, but I know from my own healing journey that silence has been the least effective remedy.

“Expressing and detailing my experience is how I chose to deal with it, in the hopes it would help others.”