” actual combat vet “
Maybe one 7.62 round slightly greased a skid of his aircraft; if at all.
Might want to check that. He was deployed on the ground in Afghanistan as a ground pounder until an Australian journalist found him and blew his cover. From Wikipedia:
This was confirmed in February of the following year, when the British Ministry of Defence revealed that Harry had been secretly deployed as a Forward Air Controller to Helmand Province in Afghanistan for the previous ten weeks.[35][36] The revelation came after the media – notably, German newspaper Bild and Australian magazine New Idea[37][38] – breached the blackout placed over the information by the Canadian and British authorities.[39] It was later reported that Harry helped Gurkha troops repel an attack from Taliban insurgents,[40] and performed patrol duty in hostile areas while in Afghanistan.[41][42][43]
So, yeah, he does have ground trigger time on the two way live fire range. There were reports at the time that he was rather disgusted at getting pulled out because of the stupid press.