Prince Harry Gets Emotional While Chatting with Army Widow in Honor of Armed Forces Day

Prince Harry recently sat down with an army widow to discuss her inspiring charity, and he couldn't help but get emotional as she told her story.

In honor of Armed Forces Day, the Duke of Sussex had a vulnerable conversation with Nikki Scott, founder of Scotty’s Little Soldiers—an organization that supports bereaved military children. The prince, who serves as Global Ambassador for the charity, uploaded a video of the nearly 20-minute chat to the official Sussex website, and it shows Harry on the verge of tears as Scott recalls the day she learned about her husband’s death in 2009.

On Instagram, Scotty’s Little Soldiers shared a clip of this moment and wrote, "We are honored to share a heartfelt conversation between our Global Ambassador, the Duke of Sussex, and our founder, @nikkiscottsls. They discuss the moment Nikki told her son that his dad, Corporal Lee Scott, had been killed in Afghanistan while serving with the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment. This powerful conversation sheds light on the impact of bereavement on children and young people."

When the prince asked how she broke the news to her children, Kai and Brooke, Scott said, "It was the worst. How do you tell a 5-year-old this? Because I literally just shattered his world. He knew that life was never ever going to be the same."

Scott went on to reveal what inspired her to launch her charity. She said, "I started to think, 'How many other children have had a parent who's died?' I started to think, 'Why has no one even reached out to me about my children yet? What support is Kai going to need? And Brooke as she grows, to get through it?'"

After she opened up about the organization's mission and impact, Prince Harry said, "The way that you've navigated this is extraordinary. There's so many people out there, inside the military community and outside as well, who, understandably, don't know how to manage these situations, so wherever you have a chance to be able to share your story, it is going to help them."

The duke also discussed how challenging it is for kids to deal with grief. He said, “[They think], ‘I don’t want to talk about it because it will make me sad.’…If you suppress this for too long, you can’t suppress it forever, it is not sustainable and it will eat away at you inside.”

The prince likely spoke from personal experience, since he lost his mother, Princess Diana, when he was just 12 years old. In fact, when he spoke with Anderson Cooper in 2023, he confessed that it took more than a decade for him to fully accept his mother's death.