Ben Roberts-Smith: Ex-soldier Heston Russell calls out big problem with ... trends now
2006: SAS Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith is deployed to Afghanistan for the first of six tours, which will see him return in 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2012.
Easter Sunday, 2009: Ben Roberts-Smith shoots a man with a prosthetic leg at the Taliban base dubbed Whiskey 108. The leg is 'souvenired' back to the Australian soldiers' base, where it is used as a drinking vessel in the unofficial bar, the Fat Ladies' Arms. Fairfax will later claim this man was an innocent villager and that Roberts-Smith also directed a 'rookie' soldier to kill a second man at Whiskey 108 as a form of 'blooding' or initiation.
11 June 2010: On an operation hunting for a senior Taliban commander in Tizak, in Afghanistan's Kandahar province, Roberts-Smith leads an assault against an enemy fortification and engages an insurgent, exposing his own position to draw fire away from members of his patrol who were pinned down. With total disregard for his own safety, he storms the enemy position, killing the two remaining machine gunners, allowing the assault team to gain the initiative.
23 January, 2011: Australian Governor-General Quentin Bryce presents Roberts-Smith his Victoria Cross medal for the Tizak operation in Perth.
11 September, 2012: In a southern Afghanistan village called Darwan, Roberts-Smith and other SAS soldiers look for an Afghan government soldier called Hekmatullah who had killed three Australian soldiers at an army base 13 days earlier. It would later be alleged by Nine newspapers that Roberts-Smith was the Australian soldier who kicked a man, Ali Jan, off a small cliff in Darwan and ordered an Afghan soldier to kill him.
2013: Roberts-Smith leaves the Australian Army. He is named Australian Father of the Year, begins
