With the second Invictus Games kicking off in Orlando in May, Prince Harry has given an interview to Good Morning America co-anchor Robin Roberts.
Roberts caught up with Prince Harry at a military facility in Aldershot, England, where Team Great Britain was training for the Invictus Games’ swimming competition.
Prince Harry joined the British Army in May 2005 and left last year.
He spoke about his inspiration for starting the games, saying: “I found myself on a plane that was delayed because a Danish soldier’s coffin was being put onto the plane. Then, while I’m sitting there, I look through the curtain in the front, and there’s three of our lads wrapped up in plastic, missing limbs.”
“One of the guys was clutching a little test tube or whatever it is of shrapnel that had been removed from his head and he was in a coma, clutching this thing,” Harry recalled. “And I suddenly thought to myself, ‘People don’t get to see this.’ I never in those 10 weeks, I never saw the injury part. I only heard about it.”
“That’s how it all started for me,” he said of his outreach to veterans. “There’s a reason why I’ve been in the Army and I would never have left the Army and not done this role. These people are role models and they need to be. It needs to be celebrated more amongst society.”
