Third in line to the British throne, the prince will return home later this week after a 20-week posting with NATO base in Afghanistan's southern province of Helmand.
Britain's Prince Harry says he killed Afghan insurgents during sorties against the Taliban while on his second tour of duty in Afghanistan where he was a gunner in Apache attack helicopters.
Queen Elizabeth's 28-year-old grandson, third in line to the British throne, will return home later this week after a 20-week posting with NATO forces at the Camp Bastion military base in the southern province of Helmand.
Asked before he left Afghanistan if he had killed insurgents during his tour, he said: "Yeah, so, lots of people have. ... Yes, we fire when we have to, take a life to save a life, but essentially we're more of a deterrent than anything else. "If there's people trying to do bad stuff to our guys, then we'll take them out of the game, I suppose," the second son of heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana said in one of several interviews released to the media.
The Taliban had said it would do its utmost to kidnap or kill Harry during his tour, and an Afghan insurgent warlord labelled him a drunken "jackal" out to kill innocent Afghans. His base was attacked on his birthday last September, but it was never clear if he was the target or if the Taliban raid, in which two US marines were killed, was in response to a film which was seen as insulting to the Prophet Mohammad.
Known in the military as Captain Harry Wales, he was deployed to Afghanistan four months ago, shortly after pictures of him frolicking naked with a nude woman at a hotel in Las Vegas were published around the world. "I probably let myself down, I let my family down, I let other people down," he said of the Vegas incident. "But it was probably a classic example of me being too much army, and not enough prince."
No Special Treatment
Harry's job as an Apache co-pilot was to man its weapons system when his 662 Squadron unit flew sorties in support of ground troops fighting Taliban or accompanying other helicopters on missions to evacuate casualties.
However, he said killing the enemy was not what had inspired him to become a gunner on a helicopter carrying rockets, missiles and a machine gun. "It's not the reason I decided to do this job. The reason was to get back out here," he said.
Harry served as a combat soldier on the front line in Helmand for 10 weeks between 2007 and 2008, calling in air strikes as a "Forward Air Controller" for NATO forces, becoming the first British royal to be engaged in combat since his uncle Prince Andrew flew helicopters during the 1982 Falklands War.
However, his first assignment was cut short after media leaked news of his presence. This time, the media were allowed to say he was on active duty in Afghanistan although giving exact details were forbidden. In the now-released interviews, Harry said he thought his elder brother Prince William, a Royal Air Force search and rescue helicopter pilot, would "love" to have been in Afghanistan too.
"To be honest, I don't see why he couldn't," the royal said, adding he had received no special treatment while on deployment - eating, sleeping and relaxing with the other pilots. "Yes, you get shot at. But if the guys who are doing the same job as us are being shot at on the ground, I don't think there's anything wrong with us being shot at as well. People back home will have issues with that, but we're not special."
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