January 06, 2023
Prince Harry has reportedly broken several military codes of conduct after he claimed in his memoir Spare that he killed 25 Taliban during his time in Afghanistan.
The Duke of Sussex’s bombshell book accidentally went on sale in Spain five days ahead of its planned January 10, 2023 release, and made headlines overnight with its explosive claims.
In the book, Prince Harry revealed the number of people he killed while serving in the British military as an Apache helicopter pilot during two tours of Afghanistan in 2007/08 and 2012/13.
Reacting to these revelations, Major General Chip Chapman, platoon commander in the Falklands conflict, told Times Radio: “We have a code of conduct. It's the values and standards of the military and he's broken at least four of those values that include respect for others, integrity, loyalty, and selfless commitment.”
“You can't be any more disloyal, either both to the Crown and the Crown being a member of your family, so from both of those perspectives it's not really good… It's crassly and naively stupid from Harry, his publishers and his ghost writer,” the serviceman added.
Maj Gen Chapman, who has also previously served as the head of counter-terrorism at the Ministry of Defence further said that he had never seen the ‘body count mentality’ shown by Prince Harry with his claims.
“You would have found it in Vietnam, it was the macro level thing. But it's an awful lack of judgement and maturity. It's a naive approach to how the military should act. We talk about jus in bello [International humanitarian law] conduct in war, this is a terrible conduct in peace.”
“Also, he was not on the ground. There's no way that he could id anyone or bury them so to give a specific number is, quite frankly, slightly ridiculous,” Maj Gen Chapman stated.
The army man concluded: “…This dissipates the affection which people would have held in him. Certainly, swinging lamps and saying you've killed 'x number of people', I've never come across that in darkened bars in the UK anywhere, it's just not really talked about.”