Prince Harry is sharing new details about his time in the military. The Duke of Sussex got candid about his deployment in his docuseries that has many people talking.
Speaking in his Netflix series Heart of Invictus, Prince Harry opened up about how he experienced an ‘unraveling’ after returning home from his tour of duty in Afghanistan.
The Duke of Sussex also noted that this situation triggered the “trauma” of losing his mother Princess Diana.
The new series Heart of Invictus from Harry and Meghan follows service members from around the globe “who have suffered life-changing injuries or illnesses” as they prepared to compete in the competition. The couple’s production company Archewell Productions, announced the release back in 2021.
However, a lot of people are drawing their attention to some of the comments Harry made in the series about his own trauma.
In the show, Harry states, “I can only speak for my personal experience, my tour of Afghanistan in 2012 flying Apaches, somewhere after that there was an unraveling and the trigger to me was actually returning from Afghanistan.But the stuff that was coming up was from 1997, from the age of 12, losing my mum at such a young age, the trauma that I had I was never really aware of, it was never discussed.”
Harry went on to mention that he really “didn’t talk about it” and also “suppressed it like most youngsters would have done.”
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Harry went on to mention that he did not know how to handle a lot of the feelings later on in life and started to feel ‘numb’ at times.
Harry mentioned, “I didn’t have that support structure, that network or that expert advice to identify what was actually going on with me. Unfortunately, like most of us, the first time you really consider therapy is when you are lying on the floor in the fetal position probably wishing you had dealt with some of this stuff previously, and that’s what I really want to change.”
Now the prince served in the military for 10 years and undertook a total of two tours in Afghanistan.
Harry first served in Helmand Province in 2007 and 2008, but his tour was cut short after one media outlet broke a news embargo and revealed his presence in the warzone. He later returned for a second tour in 2012.
Harry mentioned that he was once onboard an air hospital aboard a plane where some of the most indescribable sights took place. He said he “saw only what people had talked about.”
The Duke of Sussex stated in the series, “That was the real trigger for I’m now seeing the real cost of war. Not just those individuals but also their families and what that would mean and how their lives would literally change forever.”
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Harry mentioned that the flight also helped him realize that he needed help. Harry has also been open about his mental health over the years and wrote about more of his experiences in his 2023 memoir, Spare.
