If Harry sounds callous about killing, he is. All of us who served were – at least he knows why | Joe Glenton

The prince's comments about Afghan war deaths have caused a furore, but he was a decent officer, I'm told, and much of what he says is true

As a former soldier, I've followed Prince Harry's career with a mix of ironic and genuine interest. We served at similar times and in the same war. Friends who worked alongside him in the Household Cavalry and Army Air Corps reflect that he was a decent, rather laddish officer who did his job - which is about the highest accolade available to anyone who went to Sandhurst.

I'm an avowed republican and make no secret of it. I was a republican when I took the oath to the monarch required to join the military and I've never wavered from that first political commitment. The army was a refuge from drudgery, not an expression of my politics. What I have gleaned from Harry over the years is that The Mob - the army he was preordained to join - may have ended up as a sort of refuge for him too: in his case as a shield from the withering press scrutiny that seems to have shaped his life, rather than from cycles of precarious work and poverty.