Former special forces soldier Ben Roberts-Smith has told his Federal Court defamation trial that being awarded the Victoria Cross “put a target on my back” and left him open to spite-fuelled attacks from other soldiers.
“The decision was, ‘Could you go home and face their families if you didn’t do anything ... or do you go and potentially get injured or killed yourself’?” he said. He was not aware at the time of the significance of the battle, he said, but in retrospect he came to realise that “in terms of what we achieved by way of disrupting the insurgent network ... it was extremely significant”.
Asked by his barrister, Bruce McClintock, SC, if he observed a change in attitude towards him by his comrades after he received the award, Mr Roberts-Smith replied: “Absolutely. It put a target on my back.”He said he had always made it clear that he wasn’t in the SAS to make friends and had had “clashes” with comrades in the past. But once he became a “tall poppy”, the award could be used against him “out of pure spite” to undermine and belittle him, he said.
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