• Prince Harry has come under fire for revealing in his book Spare.
• He has been accused of violating at least four military ethics rules.
• Chip Chapman has slammed the Prince’s claims as ‘crassly and naively ignorant.’

Prince Harry has been under fire for disclosing “sensitive” material about his service in Afghanistan, and he has been accused of violating at least four military rules.

The Duke of Sussex stated in his highly awaited autobiography Spare that he killed 25 Talibans during his second tour on the Helmand battlefield while acting as an Apache helicopter co-pilot and gunner.

Harry wrote that he blasted hostile rebels during six combat missions that involved the “taking of human lives,” and that he did not regard those he killed as “humans,” but as “chess pieces” that had been removed from the board.

Many former military officers have chastised the Prince for sharing such sensitive information, with some claiming it could jeopardise his own and soldiers’ safety in the field.

Major General Chip Chapman, who participated in the Falklands campaign and has been the Senior British Military Advisor to US Central Command, has termed Harry and his ghost writer “crassly and naively ignorant”.

Chapman, who has written his own book, emphasised that they need a legal and ethical read to check for any sensitive material about special forces and casualties.

“For him, who wants privacy and security, he’s just opened himself up to every jihadist and nutcase out there,” he said on Times Radio.

Chapman claimed he had never come across  “this body count mentality” in the forces, slamming Harry’s claim of 25 kills as “slightly ridiculous”.

Because the Prince was an Apache pilot who fired cannons or missiles from a distance away from the action, Chapman claims he was unable to identify or bury anyone.

“It’s an awful lack of judgement and maturity,” he adds. It’s a naïve approach to how the military would act. And we talk about jus in bello conduct in war. This is a terrible conduct in peace.”

Harry revealed how he knew his exact number of deaths because of the “period of Apaches and laptops” in a clip from the Spanish edition of Spare acquired by The Daily Telegraph after unintentionally being on sale in Spain.

He describes the insurgents as “baddies destroyed before they could kill goodies” in his account of each “kill” when he returned to base.

The excerpt continues:  “I made it my purpose, from day one, to never go to bed with any doubt whether I had done the right thing…

whether I had only shot at Taliban, with no 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.”

Chapman believes that Harry’s opening up about his conscience is the “one nice thing” he says about his military experience, and that it should have been developed more in the novel.

He continues:  “We have a code of conduct. It’s the values and standards of the military. He’s broken at least four of those values. That includes respect for others, integrity, loyalty and selfless commitment.”

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