Prince Harry Once Spoke About How Afghanistan War Triggered the Trauma of Princess Diana's Death

Prince Harry, the younger son of Princess Diana, once shared a poignant revelation about the emotional toll of his military service. In a recent Netflix docuseries called Heart of Invictus, he opened up about how his time in Afghanistan triggered memories and trauma surrounding his mother's tragic death.

Harry says in the documentary, “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. 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, I didn’t really talk about it. I suppressed it like most youngsters would have done,” as per People.

Harry talked about how his trauma "came fizzing out" and how it shocked him to finally feel "everything" about his mother's passing. He stated he was "bouncing off the walls" at that point. In 1997, Diana tragically lost her life in a car crash in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel in Paris. Her age was 36. Harry completed two tours of duty in the Afghanistan War throughout his ten years of service in the British military. After his presence in the news was made public, he was compelled to return home from his initial posting in the Helmand Province between 2007 and 2008. In 2012, he made another tour. In his five-part Netflix series, the king revealed that while he was first "angry" about his 2008 extraction, he eventually realized it was for "everyone's safety." More significantly, though, he claimed that his trauma at home had no "support structure" to help him deal with it, as per Huff Post.

According to Harry, in the Heart of Invictus project, "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." The show centers on athletes participating in the multisport Invictus Games, which Harry launched in 2014 as a benefit for sick, injured, and wounded soldiers. In the documentary, he recalls leaving Afghanistan in 2012 and seeing "three young British soldiers" in "pieces." As the duke states in the series, "I'm now seeing the real cost of war, that was the real trigger. Not just those individuals, but also their families, and what that would mean and how their lives would literally change forever.”

Together with Meghan Markle, Harry openly left the royal family in 2020. In 2021, he confessed with Oprah Winfrey that he felt "trapped within the system."Markle revealed that she had had racial worries about the skin tone of their newborn boy and thought about suicide.