(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-03-02 11:40

LONDON - Britain's Prince Harry returned from his frontline stint in Afghanistan in somber mood after flying home opposite two severely injured soldiers.

Prince Harry (L) and Prince Charles, leave RAF (Royal Air Force) Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, southern England March 1, 2008. Prince Harry, third in line to the throne, returned home from Afghanistan on Saturday after news leaked out on the Internet that he had been secretly fighting the Taliban for 10 weeks. [Agencies]

"Those were the heroes, those who were guys who had been blown up by a mine they had no idea about," the 23-year-old prince said after his own deployment was cut short when a media news blackout was broken.

Harry, looking tired and strained after he touched down on Saturday at a Royal Air Force base in central England, had sat opposite two wounded soldiers "who were essentially comatose throughout the flight."

"One had lost two limbs -- a left arm and a right leg -- and another guy who was saved by his mate's body being in the way but took shrapnel to the neck," Harry said in a pooled despatch for reporters.

In reflective mood, the prince confessed: "I was a bit shocked ...it is a bit of a choke in your throat."

Queen Elizabeth's grandson, third in line to the throne, was pulled out from the frontline because defense officials feared worldwide coverage of his deployment with the British army could endanger him and his fellow soldiers.

The British media had maintained a voluntary blackout on Harry's Afghan deployment but that collapsed after Web sites in Australia, Germany and the United States leaked the news.

Harry, who in the past has clashed with paparazzi pursuing him outside London nightclubs, said: "Thanks to all the British media for keeping their mouths shut."

On his role fighting the Taliban, the prince said: "You do what you have to do, what's necessary to save your own guys. If you need to drop a bomb, worst case scenario, then you will, but then that's just the way it is.

"It's not nice to drop bombs ... but to save lives that's what happens."

Harry, bitterly disappointed last year when his deployment to Iraq was cancelled at the last moment amid security fears, said he was extremely keen to return to the frontline in Afghanistan.

"Yeah, I would love to go back out ... I want to go out very, very soon," he said.

But his hopes of a quick turnaround to the frontline appeared to be dashed by Britain's army chief Richard Dannatt.

"The immediate prospect of Prince Harry going anywhere else is some way off in the future," he said.

"It actually is hypothetical for the next 12 to 18 months whether he would or wouldn't deploy again," he added, stressing that Harry now had a string of regimental commitments at home.