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Prince Harryreflects on his military service in his new memoirSpare.
Inthis week’s exclusive PEOPLE cover story, the Duke of Sussex, 38, 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 painfulelements 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 Harrytells 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 adds.
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“It’s a duty, a job and aservice 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 says.“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.”
For more on PEOPLE’s cover story with Prince Harry, listen below to our daily podcast PEOPLE Every Day.
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.
The book jacket of Prince Harry’s memoir ‘Spare’.PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
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.”
Jenna Jones
For more fromPEOPLE’s exclusive interview with Harry, check out this week’s issue, on newsstands Friday
source: people.com
