Ben Roberts-Smith tells court of his ‘struggle’ after killing 15-year-old

Exactly 11 years after he stormed a machine-gun nest in an action that earned him the Victoria Cross, Ben Roberts-Smith broke down in a Sydney court as he told how he shot an Afghan teenager.

Exactly 11 years to the day that he stormed a machine-gun nest in an action that earned him the Victoria Cross, Ben Roberts-Smith broke down in a Sydney courtroom as he told how he shot an Afghan teenager.

“I struggle,” he told Justice Anthony Besanko as he ­recalled that the second of the three machine-gunners killed in that action in Tizak in ­Afghanistan on June 11, 2012 was a 15-year-old boy.

Ben Roberts-Smith arrives at the Supreme Court on Friday. Picture: NCA NewsWire

The Taliban machine-gunners had pinned down two of Mr Roberts-Smith’s SAS ­pat­rol members in a fig orchard, and as the bullets churned the earth around them he was left with a decision.

“Could you go home and face their families if you didn’t do anything and they were to get injured or killed?” he asked. “Or do you go and potentially get injured or killed yourself?

“I have always tried to serve my country with honour,” he said on Friday.

He chose to move, jumping the wall and shooting the enemy gunners.

“I could die knowing that I had done the right thing by them and their families and my family could live without me, knowing I still had my honour.”

The machine-gunners were killed within the rules of engagement in a battle where, Mr Roberts-Smith said, ­“either they were going to die or we were going to die. They were there to fight because they didn’t surrender”.

Mr Roberts-Smith in Shah Wali Kot, Afghanistan in 2010.

He said he was proud to receive the Victoria Cross for his actions in Australia’s biggest battle since the Vietnam War, but “nowhere near as proud as to count myself among the number of men in that battle”.

“Everybody fought with bravery, everybody fought with gallantry, and everyone at some point was fighting for their lives,” he said.

“I will maintain until the day I die the Victoria Cross is for what we achieved, because you cannot go into battle alone. You have to do it together.”

However, he agreed the VC had become his “cross to bear”.

“For all the good it has brought me … it has also brought me a lot of misfortune and pain,” he said. “It put a target on my back.”

Mr Roberts-Smith said becoming a “tall poppy” had opened him up to his fellow soldiers undermining and white-anting him out of pure spite.

Mr Roberts-Smith told the court he always tried to serve his country with honour. Picture: Department of Defence

When he returned to Afghanistan in 2012, most of his colleagues had moved on and he was left with a team he did not get along with.

He admitted punching one of his patrol members in the face after he giggled about shooting at a passing woman and child.

“If he had killed that woman and child, not only would he live with it for the rest of his life … the unit’s reputation would have been in tatters,” he said.

Mr Roberts-Smith is suing Nine and three of its journalists over allegations of bullying, war crimes and murder during his tour of Afghanistan.

Just before the trial began Nine dropped one allegation that he had murdered a man by shooting him at close range in 2012.

He told the court how he had taken off his body armour and swum the Helmand River to track down the man and shoot him in a rocky outcrop. At that moment the SAS were hunting a rogue Afghan soldier called Hekmatullah who had killed three Australians as they played cards.

Mr Roberts-Smith thought the man “could be Hekmatullah” so the risk in swimming the river was worth it.

Benjamin Roberts-Smith is awarded the Victoria Cross by Governor-General Quentin Bryce in January, 2011.

Nine’s decision to drop the allegation just before the trial was “particularly disgusting”, he said.

“You would think that people would be proud of someone who is prepared to do that … in the sense that you risk your own life to catch someone who had just killed three of our people.”

Instead Nine had repeated the claims until just before the trial that the man, who was an insurgent but not Hekmatullah, had been murdered.

“I have had to live with that every day for the last three years and they knew it was wrong and they kept saying it over and over again,” Mr Roberts-Smith said.

He also addressed the allegation that on the same mission, at Darwan in 2012, he kicked a handcuffed shepherd named Ali Jan over a cliff and ordered him to be shot.

“It makes me feel disappointed because I cannot ­believe that a fanciful story like that could be … printed in the paper for a number of years and believed,” he said.

Mr Roberts-Smith said there was no prisoner and no cliff. Any prisoners would not have been left unattended in the way Nine reports alleged, and two of the people Nine initially had as witnesses were not even there, he said.

“None of it adds up,” he said. “I have never killed an unarmed prisoner.”

Mr Roberts-Smith said he only learnt of the allegation six years later in a letter from journalists Chris Masters and Nick McKenzie. He denied the allegation.

“Every time I read it or hear it I cannot believe it has been written.

“You feel that you are in a bloody nightmare,” he said.

And he denied taking a teenager from a Toyota HiLux and shooting him.

On the date Nine first alleged it happened he was on an action for which he received a citation for gallantry. He said the allegation “was outright malicious because they knew I wasn’t there,” he said.

The hearing continues.