Prince Harry says he killed Afghan insurgents

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 had been operating as a gunner in Apache attack helicopters.

Queen Elizabeth’s 28-year-old grandson, the third-in-line to the British throne, was on his way home on Monday after a 20-week posting with NATO forces at the Camp Bastion military base in the southern Helmand province.

Asked before he left if he had killed insurgents during his tour, he said: “Yeah. So lots of people have.”

He went on to say “We fire when we have to. Take a life to save a life.”

“If there’s people trying to do bad stuff to our guys, then we’ll take them out of the game I suppose,” the son of heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana said in lengthy pooled interviews conducted in Afghanistan in December.

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.

The Taliban had said it would do its utmost to kidnap or kill Harry during his tour, while 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 U.S. marines were killed, was in response to a film which insulted 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.”

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.

He joked that he honed his pilot skills playing computer games.

“It’s a joy for me because I’m one of those people who loves playing PlayStation and Xbox, so with my thumbs I like to think that I’m probably quite useful,” he said.

Harry served as a combat soldier on the front line in Helmand for 10 weeks from 2007 to 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 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.”

He said he was “thrilled” for his brother Prince William and his wife, Catherine, who are expecting a baby in July and revealed he “can’t wait to be an uncle”.

But, repeating his dislike of the intrusive British press, he said he hoped the media would leave the Duchess of Cambridge alone during her pregnancy, which late last year saw her hospitalized with acute morning sickness.

“I think it’s very unfair that they are forced to publicize it when they were. But that’s just the media for you. I literally am very, very happy for them. But I just only hope that she and him, but mainly Catherine, that she gets the necessary protection to allow her as a mother, mother-to-be, to enjoy the privacy that that comes with,” he said.

Harry’s military role has enhanced his status in Britain and helped shed a reputation of a royal wild child who admitted dabbling in marijuana and under-age drinking, and who made headlines when he donned a Nazi uniform to a costume party.

As one of the most world’s most eligible bachelors, his private life remains a source of huge media attention. However, he said his antics in Vegas, where he was letting off steam ahead of his Afghan tour, should have remained private.

Unsurprisingly, he said he was more comfortable in his “normal” life in the army than as a prominent royal. He said he preferred being Captain Wales, to being Prince Harry.

Britain has announced it will withdraw almost half its 9,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year, with nearly all the rest due to pull out when the NATO mission finishes in late 2014, ending a war that has cost the lives of 440 British army personnel since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.