In November 2023, Prince Harry made his long association with the charity Scotty’s Little Soldiers official when he became a global ambassador for the UK-based group which supports the children of soldiers who were killed in action. On Thursday, Scotty’s Little Soldiers released an interview that Harry conducted with the organization’s founder to discuss their respective experiences with grief and military service. He spoke to Nikki Scott, the widow of Corporal Lee Scott, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2009, about the process she went through when telling her son about her husband’s death.

Harry discussed the feelings he had after learning about the death of his mother, and how that inspired him to get involved with the charity. “I was 12,” he said. “You were an adult but it seems to be the same, which is you convince yourself that the person that you’ve lost wants you or you need to be sad for as long as possible to prove to them that they’re missed. Then… there’s this realization of no, they must want me to be happy.”

Scott founded the organization after losing her husband, when she realized that there were few bereavement resources available for service members’ children. Since it was founded in August 2010, the charity has supported 650 children who have lost their parents in war. “Now it’s my life,” she said. “Seeing the young people, that is the best. Hearing the stories from the team when they’ve worked with a child or a family that are just at the beginning of the journey or have hit a moment when they’re just in absolute darkness, and then hearing how they can turn their lives around because Scotty’s has supported them. It’s just phenomenal.”

During their conversation, Scott mentioned that she had read Harry’s 2023 memoir Spare and could relate to the portion where he discussed feeling denial after learning about the death of his mother, Princess Diana. “I have dreams—interestingly, you know, I’ve been reading your book—just about that denial of it’s not actually happened,” she said. “I still now wake up and think, ‘It was a cover-up.’”

Prince Harry first got involved with Scotty’s Little Soldiers in 2017, and in 2018, he and wife Meghan Markle directed some of the charitable funds raised in association with their wedding to support its ongoing operations. Harry told Scott that he could tell the charity was having an impact from his earliest meetings with the children it supports.

“What you’ve done is incredible. It is truly inspirational, and I know that word gets thrown around a lot, but it is, and to see the difference in the kids,” he said. “Especially some of the ones that I met before, previously in 2017—they’re different people. You can see that they are still processing their grief, but this community of support for them is everything.”