Ben Wallace has criticised Prince Harry for “boasting” about the number of people he killed while on tour in Afghanistan.
The Duke of Sussex sparked an international furore protest after he revealed in his memoir Spare that he killed 25 Taliban during his time in the British Army. Harry also called out the “dangerous lie” that he revealed the total as a boast.
But the UK Defence Secretary insisted he was against “boasting or talking” about kill counts on Thursday.
Insisting it was his personal view, Wallace told LBC radio the success of a soldier’s time in the armed forces was not measured by “who can shoot the most or who doesn’t shoot the most”.
“The armed forces is not about a tally. I frankly think boasting about tallies or talking about tallies … distorts the fact that the army is a team game.”
He added: “If you start talking about who did what, what you are actually doing is letting down all those other people, because you’re not a better person because you did and they didn’t.”
Protests were sparked by Spare, which on Tuesday became the UK’s fastest selling non-fiction book, due to Harry writing he had engaged in “the taking of human lives” while serving as a helicopter pilot in Afghanistan.
Harry said he did not think of them as “people” but instead as “chess pieces” that had been taken off the board angering the Taliban.
The 38-year-old told Stephen Colbert it had been “hurtful and challenging” watching the reactions following the book’s publication.
“Without a doubt, the most dangerous lie that they have told, is that I somehow boasted about the number of people that I killed in Afghanistan,” Harry said on The Late Show.
He noted the context in which the reference appeared in the book, before saying: “I should say, if I heard anyone boasting about that kind of thing, I would be angry. But it’s a lie.
“And hopefully now that the book is out, people will be able to see the context, and it is – it’s really troubling and very disturbing that they can get away with it.
“Because they had the context. It wasn’t like ‘here’s just one line’ – they had the whole section, they ripped it away and just said ‘here it is, he’s boasting on this’.
“When as you say, you’ve read it and hopefully everyone else will be able to have the chance to read it, and that’s dangerous.
“My words are not dangerous, but the spin of my words are very dangerous.”
Admiral Lord West, former head of the Royal Navy, had previously called the duke “very stupid” for giving details of his Taliban kills.
Around 20 students staged a protest at a university in Helmand province where Harry was stationed, the AP reported.
