AFGHANISTAN, BEN ROBERTS-SMITH AND THE BATTLE OF SHAH WALI KOT – AARON PATRICK

Thousands of articles and many books have been written about the war in Afghanistan and the way the special forces fought, along with the saga of Ben Roberts-Smith and his Victoria Cross. In his book The Last Battle Aaron Patrick has revealed a new story — one of incredible skill, courage and resilience under almost unimaginable danger. Mistakes were made, including communication failures that could have killed Ben Roberts-Smith and his unit. But the SAS and commandos triumphed through professionalism, determination and courage. Before Australians judge their warriors, they should hear the whole story says Aaron Patrick who addressed The Sydney Institute on 29 October 2025.

AFGHANISTAN, BEN ROBERTS-SMITH AND THE BATTLE OF SHAH WALI KOT

AARON PATRICK

In 2010, during the war in Afghanistan, Australian commandos came up with a simple but daring plan: fly into the Taliban sanctuary of Shah Wali Kot at night, find insurgents prepared to fight, and kill them.

Alpha Company of the 2^nd Commando Regiment flew out in two Chinooks on 9 June to a village called Chenartu. Underestimating the size and skill of the enemy, Alpa Company found itself in a battle for its life.

A day later, a Special Air Service Regiment unit flew into an adjacent valley for what it thought would be a routine mission to capture a Taliban commander. The SAS expected to be there about an hour. The soldiers didn’t bother putting on face paint. A corporal by the name of Ben Roberts-Smith wasn’t even wearing body armour. He had taken it off because it was uncomfortable to wear sitting the door on his Black Hawk. Provided with faulty intelligence, their helicopters were attacked by the same talibs who fought the commandos the day before.

Badly outnumbered, the SASR unit could have tried to escape or destroyed the tiny village of Tizak with an air strike. Instead, armed with little more than assault rifles and grenades, E Troop conducted a daylight frontal attack that wiped out a force three times as large. SAS soldiers received the Medal for Gallantry, the Star of Gallantry and the Victoria Cross. One commando received a Commendation for Gallantry. No Australians died or were seriously injured.

The two engagements became known as the Battle of Shah Wali Kot. They were recognised in 2013 with the first battle honours since the Vietnam War, signifying that the army considers it the greatest victory of Australia’s longest war. I’ve written a book about the battle, and its aftermath, which I’ve called The Last Battle. The Battle of Shah Wali Kot is much more significant than commonly perceived.

Most importantly, instead of being the carefully executed plan presented by the army, it was a huge mistake. In Tizak, the SAS suffered from what may have been the greatest intelligence failure in its history. Instead of the 3, 4, or 5 Taliban insurgents assessed, a group of 35 SAS soldiers faced a well-organised and committed enemy of 80 plus fighters. It is incredible no SAS soldiers died.

Two minutes before the first helicopter from the 101^st US Aviation Regiment arrived in Tizak carrying Australian soldiers, the pilots were told the landing zone was safe. As they landed, they were hit with fire from 30 or more talib fighters, including multiple machine guns on a hill overlooking the landing site.

It did not have to be that way. Those fighters could have been killed the day before. The talibs who ambushed the SAS almost certainly fought the commandos in the next valley from 10am to around 4pm when they were allowed to walk away, unhindered, to the immense frustration of many commandos from Alpha Company.  To this day, many commandos feel they were not given the air support they needed to protect themselves and others from the enemy in Shah Wali Kot.

The battle was responsible for the most controversial Victoria Cross in Australian history. It is difficult to emphasise how cherished the medal is. By custom, every man or woman in the ADF must salute the recipient first, whether they’re a four-star general or a private.

Ben Roberts-Smith was the first soldier to be recognised with a VC for an offensive action in Afghanistan. To save his SAS troop, Roberts-Smith conducted a solo frontal-assault on a machine-gun position. The medal became the subject of an intense lobbying campaign within the SAS that split his squadron and contributed to colleagues deciding to go public with war crimes allegations against him from 2016 onwards.

Without the VC, Roberts-Smith’s name would have never become public. He never would have sued Nine and would not have lost the defamation lawsuit that destroyed his reputation. So, the battle has had an outsize impact far beyond its important role in military history.

My book describes the battle. As a minute-by-minute account of what happened, I hope to help Australians understand how our soldiers fought and what they were expected to do. This was a dirty war. From Australia’s side, the special forces carried a disproportionate share of the fighting. Almost half the army’s deaths came from the commandos and the SAS.

In 2010, when 120 commandos arrived in Shah Wali Kot in the middle of the night on helicopters, they burst into homes, which did not have electricity, with machine guns, bright lights and dogs. They looked for contraband and interrogated residents. They did not find anything, and did not expect to.

Because the Taliban did not wear uniforms, they could not be killed unless they were fighting. The commandos wanted to provoke them into combat by entering homes they previously considered their sanctuary. They succeeded.

At 10am a large Taliban group launched a coordinated assault on half the commando force in Shah Wali Kot. A whole platoon was pinned down, unable to shoot back. Except for one man. His name was Malcolm Goodwin. The grandson of a Maltese immigrant, Goodwin’s family settled in Mt Isa where they operated a crane-hire business.  Private Goodwin was guarding the platoon’s outer perimeter when the attack began. He was meant to be helped by five or six Afghan policemen. They fled as soon as the shooting began.

Standing a fox hole, Goodwin fought for his life for 45 minutes against multiple Talib machine guns. Even though they got as close as 150m, their cover was so good Goodwin could not see who was trying to kill him. At one stage, fearing he could be overrun, Goodwin stood up and sprayed an entire magazine from his M4 in one go, a tactic reserved for the most desperate of situations.

On the other side of the village, the commando commander, Michael Lowe, was caught outside his HQ when the attack began. So many bullets came flying in that he could not get to the compound and was forced to fight back with his M4.

Eventually the Taliban called off the attack. But they kept harassing the commandos all day. Eventually they walked off, unmolested, their guns slung over their soldiers. The commandos wondered why they were allowed to leave when aircraft were available at anytime to inflict major damage to them.

Those Taliban fighters almost certainly ended up that night in a small village in the next valley. They were waiting when four US Black Hawks arrived carried 35 SAS soldiers. Those soldiers were all lucky to survive when attacked, as they landed, by a village full of the enemy. The SAS thought they would be in the village for an hour. They were looking for a Taliban leader whose phone they had tracked across the district. Their mission was to capture or kill him. They considered it such a low-risk mission that the soldiers didn’t bother putting on camouflage face paint. Ben Roberts-Smith removed his body armour because it was uncomfortable when he sat in the door of the helicopter.

By 2010 each SAS team in Afghanistan had a list of six or so Taliban leaders to hunt down. They didn’t seem to care if they captured them dead or alive. Taliban prisoners were transferred to Afghan government detention, where they were often free to function as Taliban organisers and recruiters from jail. The Western powers maintained a list of Taliban leaders they could kill if it was not feasible to capture them called the Joint Prioritised Effects List, or J-PEL.

The war turned the SAS into assassins. They were good at it. While researching my book I sat in the kitchen of one ex-SAS operator who showed me how I would be killed without ever seeing my assassin. The SAS were responding their enemy’s tactics. The Taliban did not respect the rules of war.

In mid-2010, as the US was ramping up an offensive known as The Surge, the Taliban fought back with assassinations across southern Afghanistan, which included areas under the responsibility of Australian special forces. Their targets were mid and low-level public servants who would deliver services to villagers once they came under Kabul’s authority. The day before the commandos arrived in Shah Wali Kot, the Taliban hanged a seven-year-old boy in a town square for allegedly passing on information about the movement of their fighters.

The SAS flew into Tizak on 11 June 2010. They expected the handful of Taliban in the village to run away. They didn’t bother to put on face paint, which is normal practice before going into combat. This was a potentially fatal miscalculation.  When their four Black Hawks landed they were subjected to a torrent of gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades. The soldiers ran for their lives while Apache helicopters desperately tried to locate and kill the Taliban machine gunners.

One SAS solider and one Afghan policeman were injured. This put the Australians in an even tougher position. There was no way to remove their wounded by road. They had to bring in another helicopter to evacuate the wounded. They also flew out Rico, a Belgian Malinois shepherd trained to attack enemy shooters. That decision might have changed the course of Australian military history.

About 45 minutes after they landed, the SAS unit managed to get its wounded out. A group of sergeants, taking protection in a riverbed, had a conversation about what to do next. They had three choices: run away, bomb the village into obliteration, or kill everyone with a gun. They chose the third option.

As the SAS scouts moved along the riverbank, followed by the rest of the troop, the SAS terminology for a platoon, they were shot at by a heavy machine gun. A soldier from the New Zealand SAS was pinned down on the riverbed and shot in the hand. This soldier may be the only person alive to be present for the actions that led to the awarding of two Victora Crosses. 

The Taliban machine gunner shooting at this man was hiding in a fig orchard. The trees could grow 4 metres high. Even though they were spaced apart by several meters, the trees’ bushy tops created a jungle-like canopy that was almost impossible to see through from above. Two Apaches were called in to help him. They flew over the orchard and tried to kill the talib machine gunner with their chain guns, which fire explosive shells. It didn’t work. The world’s most advanced attack helicopter couldn’t see through the foliage.

Once again, the SAS was stuck. The rational decision at this point would have been to destroy Tizak from the air. A B-1 Lancer bomber was flying overhead. The coordinates of every building had been logged and could be transmitted to the bomber in a few minutes. Legally, Australian soldiers were entitled to destroy civilian homes if they were used by enemy soldiers.

There was a catch. This was the start of a new US strategy to win the war called The Surge. Barack Obama had authorised an extra 30,000 soldiers being sent to Afghanistan. Their mission was to defeat the Taliban in the south and bring development and government services to town and villages like Tizak.

If one of the first acts of The Surge was for a group of special forces soldiers to wipe out an entire village, it could have been a huge propaganda victory for the Taliban. The SAS might have been accused of human rights violations. Support for the war in Australia, which was patchy, could evaporate.

It was at this point that a tough Scotsman sergeant whom I have called Philip O’Connor decided to act. A former Royal Marine, he led Epic 1, which was one of the five SAS teams in Tizak that day. His deputy was Ben Roberts-Smith. “Fuck it,” O’Connor told the other sergeants. “I’m going to take my team and go around.”

At this stage, Roberts-Smith was still not wearing body armour. He may have also been wearing Merrills hiking shoes because they army had been unable to find regulation boots big enough for his feet.

Epic 1 formed the shape of an arrow and moved through the fig orchard, their assault rifles horizontal. A burst of machine gun fire rang out. They dived to the ground. Roberts-Smith and two other soldiers went to the left, where an irrigation ditch provided some protection. O’Connor and two other soldiers went to the right. The team was now separated. Roberts-Smith and the two other soldiers kept advancing while being shot at by three heavy machine guns and several men with AK-47s. Apaches flew over, firing their guns at the Taliban. It didn’t seem to work.

Eventually the SAS soldiers got about as far away as an average suburban block. They finally saw what they were attacking. The Taliban was located on the courtyard of the Tizak mosque. The courtyard was on a slight hill and looked down over the crop. A concave earthen wall separated the courtyard from the orchard. The Taliban were using it for cover, and a platform for their machine guns. It was almost a perfect defensive position. The earthen wall offered better protection than bricks.

At this point, the SAS soldiers were essentially light infantry, armed with rifles and grenades. They had no heavy weapons such as a rocket launcher that could destroy the building. In my book I described what happened next:

The enemy “hit us with everything they had”, Roberts-Smith said. “They knew that either we were going to die or they were going to die. And they were there to fight, because they didn’t surrender.” At that moment, with few options, the corporal made a decision that turned him into the most famous Australian soldier alive. It might have killed him. Instead, it ruined his life.

I’m not going to spoil the ending by giving away what happened. Except to say that the decision to award a Victoria Cross to Roberts-Smith had profound and unanticipated consequences for every man in Epic 1, the SAS and the whole army. The shadow of those events persists to today. About five years later misconduct allegations against the SAS entered the public domain. Over the years, they would receive so much coverage that they came to overshadow the entire war, which most Australians never really understood anyway.

Today, the association between Afghanistan and war crimes is so strong that many veterans are reluctant to disclose their service. The war is shrouded in a collective shame that makes it difficult, if not impossible, for individual and collective acts of heroism to be celebrated. Outside their own small community, Afghanistan combat veterans face the cold glare of public opprobrium.

Perhaps the best example is the Battle of Shah Wali Kot in June 2010. Even though Australia’s greatest modern military victory was recognised by the first battle honours since the Vietnam War, it is barely talked about, even within the Army.

One of the soldiers who fought that day was a private of Maltese heritage from Mt Isa named Malcom Goodwin. Malcolm joined the army to drive trucks. One day, on an exercise in Queensland, he was waiting in line for food when he saw a guy in front of him with an unusual weapon and a beard. He said to a friend, what’s up with this guy? He’s SF, the friend said. What’s SF, Malcolm asked. Special Forces, he said.

In that moment Malcolm decided he did not want to be a truck driver. But he wasn’t fit, didn’t know much about guns and had no understanding of infantry tactics. Malcom tried out for the SAS. On the three-week selection course, he fractured his hand. Unable to hold his weapon properly, he failed the course.

He decided to give the commandos a shot. During the selection process there is a list of every item every applicant must carry. This includes a piece of paper a soldier must sign if he wants to withdraw. Malcolm ate his. The instructors did not believe him and gave him a replacement form, laminated.

In 2010, Malcolm found himself in a makeshift foxhole in Chenartu, supervising four or five Afghan policemen. They were attacked 2-3 Taliban machine gunners as part of a full-on assault on the entire platoon. The policemen fled, leaving Malcolm alone. For 45 minutes, he fought singlehandedly against the enemy, who were getting closer and closer. At one point he did something soldiers only ever do in extreme situations. He put his M4 assault rifle on automatic, stood up and sprayed an entire magazine towards the Taliban machine guns. If the insurgents had killed him and taken his position, they would have been so close to the platoon that the fight could have descended to room-to-room fighting. The Australians could have been overrun.

Malcolm could have run away at any time. He stayed until the Taliban gave up and withdrew. For his actions, Malcolm was nominated for the Victoria Cross. He did not get it. The medal was given for actions the following day by a corporal in a village in the next valley west, Ben Roberts-Smith.

Everyone knows Roberts-Smith’s name.  No one knows Malcolm Goodwin’s. I believe Malcolm’s actions that day should be taught in every primary school. He demonstrated bravery, loyalty, humility and perseverance. He is a true Australian hero and deserves to be celebrated.

It is difficult to celebrate Afghan war veterans. The war-crimes allegations have so overwhelmed discussions about the war that it has become is difficult or impossible to celebrate the bravery of individuals or military successes.

The veterans walk among us but are not seen. The do not feel they can talk about the war except amongst themselves. Dean Parkinson , one of the commandos who fought in the battle of Shah Wali Kot, told me his son came home from primary school and asked him: “Did you murder anyone over there dad?”

Now Dean was one of the oldest commandos in his company. Seeing the intense poverty of rural Afghanistan, he distributed pens and notebooks to children. When he realised girls were missing out, because they weren’t allowed out of their mud-brick compounds, he developed a technique to throw the pens and notepads through open doors as the commandos drove past.

Attitudes to the war are unlikely to change until the war crimes investigations are resolved. This process is proving to be very slow and very expensive. When you include this financial year, the government has allocated $318 million over a decade to the investigations. This equates to $17 million each for the 19 soldiers whom a NSW judge, Peter Brereton, recommended in 2020 face prosecution.

Despite the generous budget and a staff around 160, the Office of the Special Investigator created to turn Mr Brereton’s findings into court-level evidence has charged only one person in four years: Oliver Schulz, a former Special Air Service soldier accused of executing a detainee in a field in 2012. The other 18 veterans do not know when or if AFP officers will one day arrive with handcuffs. They are no longer the young, thrill-seeking men who fought in a brutal and often-exciting war against the Taliban. In some cases, their alleged crimes date back 20 years. Most are middle-aged, leading quiet lives in Australia and overseas.

I wrote today about an unusual alliance between the Liberal Party and Greens to push investigators to finalise these investigations. Shadow Defence Minister Angus Taylor and Greens senator David Shoebridge both said the delay is unfair on the veterans themselves. Whether Afghanistan was the right war at the right time, was irrelevant to Australia’s special forces soldiers, the commandos and SAS. They did their duty. Some died. Others came back badly injured, physically and psychologically.

All were shaped by the experience. They deserve recognition for their sacrifice, praise for their courage. The victory was due to their heroism, determination and expertise. In a war the West was losing, a small group of Australians demonstrated that success was possible with the right plan executed by skilled fighters and able leaders.

They deserve our respect, recognition and understanding.