‘Soldier’s soldier’ Keith Payne backs accused war criminal and fellow Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith
As the nation prepares to honour its war veterans and service personnel, Australia’s most decorated soldier has come out in support of fellow VC holder Ben Roberts-Smith.
Keith Payne says the Victoria Cross he earned in Vietnam in 1969 was the signal honour of his long and decorated life.
At 90, he is the doyen of Australia’s living VC recipients, the soldier’s soldier who never doubted where his duty lay.
“What happens in war, stays in war,” Mr Payne insists, and on this day of days for our veterans and service personnel he has come out with guns blazing in defence of fellow VC holder Ben Roberts-Smith.
Until now, Mr Payne has kept his distance from the claims and counterclaims swirling around Mr Roberts-Smith’s conduct in Afghanistan that led to him launching an ill-fated Federal Court defamation case against the Nine newspapers last year and being branded a war criminal by the trial judge. Mr Roberts-Smith is appealing the decision.
While Mr Payne won’t be drawn on the detail of the devastating civil finding against Mr Roberts-Smith, he told The Australian he wouldn’t turn his back on a fellow soldier either, just as he refused to abandon the 40 wounded or cut-off comrades he was credited with saving all those years ago in Vietnam.
“In Ben’s case, I am very, very sorry and a little angry that that sort of thing happened to him,” he said ahead of a round of Anzac Day appearances in Melbourne.
“Because what happens in war, stays in war. There are many, many things that happened during the First World War, the Second World War and the campaigns since that have never been mentioned because it belongs to war and it should remain in the war.”
Asked if he counted Mr Roberts-Smith as a friend, Mr Payne said: “Of course. If I could, I would offer him a job … I wish Ben all the best of luck.” Contrary to some accounts, Mr Roberts-Smith, 45, is not Australia’s most decorated living soldier.
That honour belongs to Mr Payne, who holds four medals for gallantry, including the VC, and 27 other military decorations, against Mr Roberts-Smith’s still impressive tally of three bravery awards and 11 decorations.
Mr Payne also holds the distinction of being the last Australian to receive the VC as an imperial honour; the other three surviving VC holders, Mr Roberts-Smith and fellow Afghanistan veterans Mark Donaldson and Daniel Keighran, were awarded the Victoria Cross for Australia, instigated in 1991.
What does it take to earn the ultimate recognition for bravery in war? A reflective Mr Payne said: “You know, what occurred was pure and simple doing my duty, what I was responsible for. That goes back to a lot of the holders of the Victoria Cross … as hard as it is, you’ve just got to do your duty.”
Mr Payne remains surprised that he survived that chaotic night in May 1969 when he was on secondment to the US special forces command, leading a company of elite South Vietnamese troops stiffened by Australian and American combat specialists.
Confronted on three sides by a vastly superior force of North Vietnamese regulars, most of Mr Payne’s men were driven back and separated from the stragglers and wounded. He was determined to reach them.
After organising a defensive perimeter, he spent hours crawling through the jungle to make contact with the 40-odd survivors. He carried some back to safety and organised the rescue of the rest, then led the battered company past the North Vietnamese positions to a nearby US base.
Remarkably, Mr Payne himself was injured: a rocket splinter had slammed into his skull and he didn’t want to touch the heavily bleeding wound, reasoning if he didn’t know how bad it was, he wouldn’t have to worry about it. He was knocked off his feet by a mortar explosion and also hit in a hand and arm.
“A few minutes in there were pretty hairy,” he said. “Yes, I was bloody scared. But your concern is not only for yourself, it’s for your men and your family in case things don’t work out.”
He agrees wholeheartedly with advertising guru John Singleton, who recently issued “an apology … from a coward” to Mr Roberts-Smith in a paid spot in The Australian, that people who haven’t gone to war shouldn’t judge those who have. “That is why things that happen in war, remain in war,” Mr Payne said.
Rejecting the contention that the former SAS trooper should be stripped of his VC, he said: “You can’t take the action away from the man … it is not allowable under the record.”
Entering his 10th decade, Mr Payne is not done fighting – for better treatment of the veterans who, like him, came home with PTSD and other psychological injuries.
His wife, Florence, 89, who has shared his life for the past 65 years and a home in Mackay, north Queensland, said the marriage might not have lasted if their “love for one another wasn’t as strong as it is”.
He and friend Rick Meehan, a former navy man, have set up a charity, the Keith Payne VC Veterans Benefit Group, to raise funds and agitate on behalf of ex-servicemen doing it tough. They will be together in Melbourne on Thursday when Mr Payne is hosted at an Anzac Day brunch by the Essendon Football Club and the blockbuster at the MCG between the Bombers and reigning AFL premiers Collingwood.
He’s certainly in demand. Mr Payne has received word that King Charles would like to catch up when he makes his first visit to Australia as sovereign in October, health permitting.
They go back. After the late queen presented his VC in 1970, he got to know the then Prince of Wales, who backed his campaign on PTSD.
“I’ve corresponded with him on the post-traumatic stress disorder situation for years,” he said. “It’s just a real natural sort of friendship.”
He’s also got a project going in Fiji, where he’s trying to repatriate from PNG the remains of World War II VC recipient Sefanaia Sukanaivalu, killed on the island of Bougainville in 1944.
Like Mr Payne, the Fijian corporal put himself in harm’s way to rescue comrades; when he was hit, Sukanaivalu deliberately broke cover so he could be finished off by the Japanese, ensuring no one would have to come for him.
If he can get the selfless soldier home, Mr Payne hopes to persuade the Fijian and Australian governments to fund a “rest and recuperation” centre for ex-service personnel from across the Pacific at the new gravesite in Fiji.
He’s in touch with Fijian President Wiliame Katonivere and Anthony Albanese, arguing the plan is a good fit with Australia’s diplomatic efforts in the Pacific to keep the Chinese at bay.
“If you do that, you’ve got the spokes of a wheel going up to a lot of other islands,” he said. “I think I’m getting somewhere … but we’ll see.”
Although the long, tender goodbye for the WWII veterans will rightly be front and centre at commemorations around the country on Thursday – many more marches will take place without a living link to that great generation – Mr Payne is acutely aware that his peer group is not getting any younger.
He first saw combat in the 1950-53 Korean War, whose veterans are also fading fast, aged on average 93. Their number is forecast to dip below 1000 next year, according to the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. The average age of Australia’s 34,000 Vietnam veterans is 78.
Asked what Anzac Day meant to him, Mr Payne said: “It means everything … a show of respect each year for those who made the supreme sacrifice in carrying out their duty against an enemy of our nation.
“That’s why the general public stands and watches the old Diggers marching up the street. It’s a day when the country says thank you.”
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