SHOULD BEN ROBERTS-SMITH BE STRIPPED OF HIS MEDALS?

To begin with, regarding the Victoria Cross:

"...The royal warrant establishing the award in 1856 included a clause which allowed for a recipient's name to be erased from the official register and their pension cancelled in 'certain wholly discreditable circumstances'.

There have been 1,358 VCs awarded and, despite?the ability to revoke them still standing in the modern day, only eight were ever forfeited between 1861 and 1908.??The practice seems to have stopped largely due to the position of King George V who felt that once the Victoria Cross had been bestowed it should never be revoked.

His private secretary Lord Stamfordham wrote on July 26, 1920 that: 'The King feels so strongly that, no matter the crime committed by anyone on whom the VC has been conferred, the decoration should not be forfeited.'

'Even were a VC to be sentenced to be hanged for murder, he should be allowed to wear his VC on the scaffold.'..." Daily Mail Australia - Jun 4

As for the rest of his medals, before we let our emotions kick in, we must consider this:

He was also awarded a Medal for Gallantry in 2006.?He did six tours of Afghanistan between 2006 and 2012 and he was a soldier 'par excellence!'

The other side of his character was entirely different as we have found out! However, the SAS does not recruit men training for the priesthood. They are taught to be cold-blooded killers. In battle, how many times have the enemy put their hand up only to be mown down by regular soldiers and nobody turns a hair?

Judging soldiers like Roberts that are trained to be killing machines is not for the likes of me and you. Those that are willing to kill others and volunteer to do so in whatever circumstances are not normal to start with! But we need them nevertheless. We even root for such men when we watch so-called superheroes on the box shooting down hundreds of villains until the body bags run out. At that time, we have no qualms about the things we are watching because it is all so-called make-believe anyway.

War is not make-believe. It is very real for those that have fought in such. I am among the lucky ones. Having been born in 1941, I have missed all the wars that have been fought since and I thank God for it! I don't consider myself a coward, but I have never been put to the test on a battlefield so I wouldn't know what I would do until the crunch came! If someone were trying to kill me, then I believe that I would try to kill him first because survival is an animal instinct within us. However, I also know that I would be useless as a commando or part of an elite force because killing another human being in cold blood is completely abhorrent to my nature. So is killing an animal for that matter. However, if such needs to be done by others that have fewer qualms than I do, then I am not going to be condemning them afterward.

In defense of Roberts, he was conditioned to kill and it became second nature to him. How many of his comrades in the SAS and in many other regiments have also done the same? We only hear about the ones that have been reported.

We must also remember that where he was fighting, the enemy did not wear a uniform.

Roberts was an exceptionally brave man. I am 5' 7" tall, he is 6' 7". I would have been behind the biggest boulder I could find; he was out there exposing his enormous frame to the enemy at a terrible risk. There is no doubt in my mind that at those moments in time, he was indeed a magnificent warrior, a true hero, and an inspiration to all around him.

Having said that, what he did afterward is not something that any of us should condone or excuse. Killing defenseless soldiers and civilians in cold blood is unacceptable and he should be tried for doing so. However, in my opinion, he should not be stripped of his medals. He well and truly earned them and richly deserved them.

We don't judge a person's character when awarding medals in recognition of their deeds on the battlefield. We judge such a person's actions at the time, not whether such an individual is good or not! What Roberts did in battle was truly extraordinary! His conduct when he murdered those civilians was heinous, unconscionable, and inexcusable. They are, however, separate issues and should in my opinion be treated as such.