Veteran criticises Prince Harry’s ‘kill count’ claim in Spare
Prince Harry has been criticised by a retired Army officer over a passage in his memoir Spare in which he wrote about the number of people he killed while serving in Afghanistan, with the veteran accusing the Duke of Sussex of using the account to sell books.
Retired colonel Tim Collins said the way the Duke described the figure was not how soldiers talk about combat, with Express reporting that Collins called it a “tragic moneymaking scam” and said the comments “badly” let the side down.
Speaking to Forces News, Collins said he had never heard servicemen talk about “kill counts” and argued that taking a life on operations is “the most serious thing you can ever do”. He also criticised what he described as the tone of the account, saying soldiers do not treat violence as “notches on the rifle butt”, and suggested the disclosure risked presenting military service as a game.
The remarks add to continued scrutiny of Prince Harry’s relationship with the armed forces community since the publication of Spare in 2023, alongside wider debate about his decision to include operational detail in the book. The Duke has previously described his decade in the Army as a defining period of his life, but the memoir’s revelations have repeatedly drawn pushback from former officers and commentators.
Prince Harry stepped back from frontline royal duties in 2020 and now lives in California with Meghan Markle and their children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet. Neither the Duke nor his representatives have responded publicly to Collins’s latest comments.
