He’s no longer a Prince – having been stripped of all his Royal titles – but Andrew Mountbatten Windsor will keep one highly-coveted honour, King Charles has decided.
UK Defence Secretary John Healey previously announced that Andrew would lose his honorary rank of Vice Admiral in the Royal Navy – a position he attained after a 22-year career in which he served as a helicopter pilot during the Falklands War.
“This is a move that’s right, it’s a move the King has indicated we should take, and we’re working on that at the moment,” Healy told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.
But that doesn’t mean Andrew – who’s facing continuing fallout over his friendship with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein – will lose the medals he was awarded during his military career.
Buckingham Palace has confirmed that Charles agreed to Andrew keeping the campaign medal he was given for active service during the Falklands conflict of 1982.
It’s understood Andrew is allowed to keep the medal – and an additional rosette – as they are physical awards for operational duties and are not honourary titles, which are rather ranks of distinction.
Andrew was famously pictured on his return from the Falklands, where he was greeted as a hero by his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth.
After she handed a uniform-clad Andrew a rose, he was photographed beaming while placing the stem between his teeth.
Fellow Falklands veterans have waded into the discussion over the King’s latest move, saying it would be “morally indefensible” for a medal earned for service to be revoked.
“He has lost all other aspects of dignity, respect and honour he was ever once shown,” fellow serviceman Simon Weston told the Telegraph.
“But the one thing you cannot strip away from the man, no matter how vindictive, vicious or virtue-signalling you want to be, is that moment in his life where he was dignified, honourable and courageous.”
