Ben Roberts-Smith says Victoria Cross ‘put a target on my back’

Ben Roberts-Smith says he’s proud of receiving the award but it brought a ‘lot of misfortune, pain’ and animosity from fellow soldiers.

Highly decorated SAS soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith, arrives at the Supreme Court for the defamation trial against Nine's Newspapers. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Swift

About 76 Taliban insurgents were killed during a battle at Tizak, in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, for which Ben Roberts-Smith received the Victoria Cross.

The former Special Air Service Regiment soldier told the Federal Court, on the eleventh anniversary of the event, that it was the most significant battle involving Australian troops since Vietnam. It had put a dent in the insurgency from which it would not recover for many years, he said.

Mr Roberts-Smith said he was proud of receiving the Victoria Cross for his actions that day, but it had also brought him a “lot of misfortune and pain”.

“It put a target on my back … As soon as you become a tall poppy that gives people the opportunity to belittle you and drag you down,” he said.

The 42-year-old said when he decided to risk his life by charging at insurgents with machine guns during the 14-hour battle at Tizak, he had watched two of his comrades taking a significant amount of fire. “The decision was, ‘Could you go home and face their families if you didn’t do anything and they were to get injured or killed?’” he said.

“I have always tried to serve my country with honour … I could live, or I could die knowing I’d done the right thing. My family could live without me knowing that I still had my honour.”

However, when he returned to Afghanistan in 2012, after receiving the medal, he was subjected to animosity from fellow soldiers. People would write “childish things” on the notice board at their base, such as “RS is trying to get another medal”.

The former Corporal is suing Nine newspapers The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age and The Canberra Times, now under separate ownership, as well as three journalists, for defamation over reports published in 2018 that alleged Mr Roberts-Smith had committed murder during deployments to Afghanistan. He is also suing Nine over allegations that he punched a woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair.

The parents of Ben Roberts-Smith arrive at the Federal Court. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

On Friday, Mr Roberts dismissed the outlets’ “centrepiece” allegation – the murder of unarmed civilian Ali Jan in 2012 – as a “fanciful story” that was “maintained for years” despite the accusation making no “sense”.

This is one of six unlawful killings the newspapers allege Mr Roberts-Smith was involved in or committed in the war-torn country. They allege the farmer was kicked off a cliff while handcuffed, then dragged across a creek bed and shot by Australian soldiers on the edge of a corn field in Darwan on September, 11 2012.

Asked by his barrister, Bruce McClintock, SC, if he believed it was “right to kill unarmed” PUCs – an acronym for ­persons safely and securely under the control of Australian forces – Mr Roberts-Smith said: “Absolutely not.”

“Every time I have to read that or hear it, I can’t believe it has been written,” he told the court. “It feels like a nightmare, to be frank.” He also flatly denied allegations he was “responsible for murdering an adolescent found in a Toyota HiLux” in November 2012, saying his troop had not even intercepted the vehicle.

Earlier, Mr Roberts-Smith described punching another soldier in the face after a “blue on blue” incident in which Australian troops had fired at each other. The man had fired his machine gun uncontrollably and lost awareness of his surroundings during the incident.

Mr Roberts-Smith told the court that afterwards, the soldier had giggled when he saw him.

“I told him to stand up and I punched him in the face,” he said.

Mr Roberts-Smith said he asked the man, who had told him he might have been firing at a woman and her child, if he had “any fucking idea” what he could’ve done to his own life or career if he had killed someone. He would not only have had to live with the death, his career would have been over and the unit’s reputation would have been in tatters.

Mr Roberts-Smith said he regretted punching the man – who “just wasn’t up to par at that point” – but he had still maintained a friendship with him after the incident.

The decorated veteran also described an incident in which he swam across the Helmand River to kill an insurgent who had been hiding in a rocky outcrop. He had thought the man might be Afghan soldier Hekmatullah, who had murdered three Australian soldiers.

Nine newspapers had originally alleged that Mr Roberts-Smith murdered the man, but withdrew the murder allegation last month.

Roberts-Smith described an incident in which he pursued an insurgent whom he thought was Afghan soldier, Hekmatullah, who murdered three Australian troops. Picture: Four Corners

Mr Roberts-Smith said he believed this murder allegation had been “particularly disgusting” because he had risked his own life to swim across the river, to pursue the armed insurgent, and he had received no apology after the allegation was withdrawn.

“I’ve had to live with it every day for the last three years and they knew it was wrong and they kept saying it over and over again,” he said.

The veteran described walking through cracks between boulders that were “like hallways” to search for the insurgent after crossing the river alone. He eventually found the man tucked under the low portion of a boulder after climbing up on top of one of the rocks, and shot him at close range, killing him instantly.

Although he had shot off the top of the man’s head, he had asked a comrade to photograph him, in case it could help to identify whether the man was Hekmatullah.

He said he had been covered in the man’s blood and later went for a blood test because he was worried he had been contaminated after touching his own face, but reports that he had got some of the man’s brain matter in his mouth were false.