Photo: CBS
Prince Harryis setting the record straight.
During an appearance on CBS’The Late Show withStephen Colbertthat will air in full Tuesday night, Harry addressed reports that he bragged about killing 25 people while in Afghanistan in his memoirSpare.
“Without a doubt,the most dangerous lie that they have toldis that I somehow boasted about the number of people that I killed in Afghanistan,” Harry, 38, told the talk show host, 58.
He continued, “If I heard anyone boasting about that kind of thing, I would be angry. But it’s a lie. And hopefully now that the book is out, people will be able to see the context. It’s really troubling and very disturbing that they can get away with it. They had the context. It wasn’t like, ‘Here’s just one line.’ They had the whole section, they ripped it away and just said, ‘Here it is. He’s boasting on this.’ … And that’s dangerous.”
Harry said, “My words are not dangerous, but the spin of my words are very dangerous.”
Pointing out that Harry’s revelations aren’t “new information,” Colbert referenced a decades-old Reuters article that noted he killed Afghans and members of the Taliban while at war.
“Almost 10 years to the date,” said Harry. “My face was splattered all over the front pages because someone asked me a question, while I was still in Afghanistan, if I had killed anybody from an attack helicopter, and I said yes.”
Harry concluded, “I think the most important thing here is, not only the context, but the reason why I decided to share this in my book. To the vets here and to the civilians here — which this may feel as though this is slightly a weird conversation to have, especially on this show of all shows — I made a choice to share it because having spent nearly two decades working with veterans all around the world, I think the most important thing is to be honest and to be able to give space to others to be able to share their experiences without any shame.”
He left the audience and Colbert with one final note: “My whole goal and my attempt with sharing that detail is to reduce the number of suicides.”
Jenna Jones
InSpare,Prince Harrysaid he wanted to leave the war in Afghanistanwith his “conscience intact.”
“I made it my purpose, from day one, to never to 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,” Harry wrote.
With videos taken from the Apache helicopters and relayed to the base, 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,” he wrote. “So my number is 25. It’s not a number that fills me with satisfaction but nor does it embarrass me.”
Inthis week’s exclusive PEOPLE cover story, the Duke of Sussex addresses how he reconciles the ethical impacts of war, including the lives that are lost and taken.
“I don’t know that you ever fully reconcile the painful elements of being at war. This is something each soldier has to confront, and in the nearly two decades of working alongside service personnel and veterans, I’ve listened to their stories and have shared mine,“Prince Harrytold PEOPLE.
“In these conversations, we often talk about the parts of our service that haunt us — the lives lost, the lives taken. But also the parts of our service that heal us and the lives we’ve saved,” he added.
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“It’s a duty, a job and a service to our country — and having done two tours of duty in Afghanistan for my country, I’ve done all I could to be the best soldier I was trained to be,” he said.“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.”
Harry held the honorary military titles of Captain General of the Royal Marines, Honorary Air Commandant of RAF Honington and Commodore-in-Chief, Small Ships and Diving, Royal Naval Command before he andMeghan Marklestepped back from their senior royal roles.
Tune in for the rest ofPrince Harry’s interview with Colbert Tuesday at 11:35 p.m. ET/PT on the CBS Television Network.
source: people.com
