Table of Contents
As I often say, a day where I haven’t learned something new is a day wasted. Well, today I learned, among other things, that I’ve been quite wrong about Ben Roberts-Smith being Australia’s most-decorated living soldier. As it turns out, that honour belongs to Vietnam veteran Keith Payne.
I also learned that Keith Payne is absolutely adamant: Ben Roberts-Smith is welcome at any Anzac Day ceremony in the country.
“Of course he should march or be at the Dawn Service, whatever he wants to. I’ll be very, very bloody surprised and so will the remainder of the veteran community if he’s not bloody welcome wherever he goes.”
Naturally, the same elite chatterers leading the witch-hunt against Roberts-Smith will blither some self-righteous palaver that ‘Anzac Day shouldn’t be politicised’. Spare me. These pontificating poltroons have long besmirched Anzac Day with their cheap, culture war politics. Most notably, last year at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, with the infamous, hectoring ‘Welcome to Country’ at the Dawn Service, when a strident Aboriginal activist all but berated the assembled mourners and made it quite clear that he regarded them as interlopers on ‘his’ ‘country’.
But that’s ever the way of the left: start a culture war and, when anybody dares speak back, screech, ‘Oh my God! Why are you starting a culture war?!’
So, pardon me if I don’t take this sort of pearl-clutching seriously.
In a move that threatens to overshadow the 111th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings, a day of solemn remembrance for Australians, Mr Roberts-Smith will front an Anzac Day event in Queensland and defy reported calls by some of his supporters to boycott the annual services and marches.
“Reported”? By whom?
On the other hand, Australia’s most-decorated living soldier is backing him to the hilt.
Mr Roberts-Smith told the Australian: “I greatly appreciate the support from Keith Payne VC and everyone else that has made contact. Anzac Day is sacred to me and every other veteran. I will be attending to pay my respects and I encourage everyone else to.”
Mr Payne, 92, the soldier’s soldier who earned his VC in 1969, said he would be proud to march alongside his “mate”, Mr Roberts-Smith.
Far from turning his back on him, Mr Payne – as full of fight as ever – reached out to Mr Roberts-Smith after he was arrested and initially held in custody over the alleged murder of five Afghan nationals.
Mr Payne told him: “Keep a smile on your face, mate. There’s a big win in front of you.”
Payne is ropeable that Roberts-Smith is even in the position he’s been put in.
“I am very, very sorry that that sort of thing happened to him,” he said at the time. “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” […]
Mr Payne, who retired from the army in 1975 in the senior non-commissioned rank of warrant officer, said he was dismayed that Mr Roberts-Smith, a corporal, had been prosecuted when those above him in the chain of command were seemingly not held to account […]
“The poor bugger, he’s just waiting for the big day,” Mr Payne said, referring to the impending war-crimes trial. “What’s going to come out there and through everything else means there’s a lot of people ducking and weaving at the moment … there’s a lot of ifs and buts and maybes that should be investigated right the way through to the (commissioned) officer bracket, right up to the commanding officer.
“Because there’s going to be a lot more to come out of this case dealing with the whole of the military structure than what there is for Ben. How it ends up for him is anyone’s guess but I’m of the opinion … that Ben will come out of this very lightly and be welcomed back into society.”
While some of Roberts-Smith’s supporters planned separate events on Saturday, the group Frontline Veterans urged those participating in the official services and marches to wear an olive ribbon on their medals or lapels as a show of support.
