Prince Harry made an emotional admission about his own experience with grief while meeting with a war widow.
In new footage shared to social media from a charity visit to Scotty’s Little Soldiers in May, the Duke of Sussex was filmed speaking to Nikki Scott – the charity’s founder, who also lost her husband in combat.
Harry, 39, listened as Scott recalled the moment she found out her husband Corp. Lee Scott had been killed in Afghanistan in 2009 and how she broke the news to her two children Kai and Brooke, aged five and seven months at the time.
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Watch the video above
“It was the worst. How do you tell a five-year-old this?” a visibly emotional Scott told Harry.
“Because I literally just shattered his world. He knew that life was never ever going to be the same.”
Harry, who has his own experience with loss after mum Princess Diana’s death when he was just 12, responded with some wise words about how children deal with grief.
That’s the hardest thing, especially for kids, I think, which is, ‘I don’t want to talk about it because it will make me sad, but once realising if I do talk about it, and I’m celebrating their life, then actually, things become easier,” Harry told Scott.
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“As opposed to, ‘No I’m just not going to talk about it and that’s the best form of coping’, when in fact, it’s not.”
He added: “If you suppress this for too long, you can’t suppress it forever, it’s not sustainable and it will eat away at you inside.”
The former senior royal spoke with Scott during the filmed interview in support of the charity, which helps teach bereaved military children how to cope and celebrate their late parent’s life.
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Harry was moved by Scott’s story and thanked her for all the work Scotty’s Little Soldiers does for military children and their families.
“What you’ve done is incredible. It is truly inspirational. I’m really honoured and privileged to be part of Scotty’s now,” he said.
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“And I really look forward to us doing everything we can to bring in more people, more interest, raise more funds and be able to get the message out there to get more kids the support they so desperately need.”
Harry has been involved with the charity since 2007 and became a global ambassador in 2023.
The footage was filmed in May around the time the Duke of Sussex and wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, embarked on an unofficial royal tour of Nigeria.
However it was only shared onto the charity’s official YouTube page in June 2024.
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