Col Tim Collins slams Prince Harry’s claim of killing 25 Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, coming only weeks after Harry and Meghan's Netflix documentary

Collins, a QUB graduate who is widely known for a pre-battle speech he made in Iraq, said Harry has now turned against his “other family, the military”.

In his new book, Spare, Harry said he did not think of those he killed as people, but instead as “chess pieces” that had been taken off the board.

Harry wrote that flying six missions during his second tour of duty on the front line in 2012 to 2013 resulted in “the taking of human lives”, of which he was neither proud nor ashamed.

“So, my number is 25. It’s not a number that fills me with satisfaction, but nor does it embarrass me,” he wrote.

Responding to the claim, Colonel Tim Collins told Forces News: "This is not how we behave in the Army; it's not how we think."

Col Collins completed three tours with the SAS and UK Special Forces.

His rousing speech to British troops on the eve of the Iraq War in March 2003 made headlines worldwide.

"He has badly let the side down,” he said. “We don't do notches on the rifle butt. We never did.”

The colonel has accused the Duke – who alongside the Duchess of Sussex stepped down as a senior Royal in 2020 – of pursuing "riches he does not need" and rejecting "family and comradely love that he badly needs".

He told Forces News: "Leonardo Da Vinci once said: 'He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year'.

"Prince Harry's latest revelations in his memoir 'Spare' are clearly a tragic money-making scam to fund the lifestyle he can't afford and someone else has chosen.

"Amongst his assertions is a claim that he killed 25 people in Afghanistan. That's not how you behave in the Army; it's not how we think. He has badly let the side down. We don't do notches on the rifle butt. We never did.

"The British Army was deployed to Afghanistan to assist the lawful government and the benighted people – not to kill them. We lost people dead and insurgents also died – as did some innocents caught in the conflict. But that was a regrettable consequence of a lawful intervention with the best intentions.

"Harry has now turned against the other family, the military, that once embraced him having trashed his birth family.

"He has chosen a path that is alien to us in the UK and the Commonwealth, pursuing US identity politics and casting slurs or racism around where none exists in any manner comparable to the USA.

"I wonder whose path he has chosen? In the end, I see only disappointment and misery in his pursuit of riches he does not need and his rejection of family and comradely love that he badly needs.

"He would be well to reflect that money does not actually exist. Ask anybody who invested in Bitcoin. However, love is real."