SCOTT SMITH helped protect the US President, Barack Obama, during his visit to Darwin last year, and served as a special forces combat engineer in Afghanistan and the Solomon Islands.But it was his most recent deployment to Afghanistan – his second – that brought his promising career to a violent end.
On Sunday night, during an operation targeting a Taliban network in or about Oruzgan, a joint team of Australian and Afghan special forces were searching a compound when an improvised explosive device detonated, killing Corporal Smith instantly.
It is not known how the device was triggered, but it is possible Corporal Smith, a member of the Special Operations Engineering Regiment (SOER) may have been working to defuse it.
The SOER is an elite unit of Australian combat engineers – sappers – that works with Australian commandos and the SAS detecting and defusing a series of explosive, chemical, biological and radiological threats.
He is the third special forces combat engineer to have died in Afghanistan. Sergeant Brett Till and Sapper Rowan Robinson were killed in March 2009 and June last year, respectively. Both served in the SOER, then named the Incident Response Regiment.
Corporal Smith, from the Barossa Valley in South Australia, joined the military in 2006 and joined the SOER two years later, in 2008. He undertook a 2006 tour of the Solomon Islands and a 2010 tour of Afghanistan.
He returned to Afghanistan in July this year, and was only weeks from finishing his tour when he was killed.
A Defence statement released yesterday described Corporal Smith as a talented young soldier with a bright future.
”He [was] a genuine, honest and dedicated member who was probably one of the best junior non-commissioned officers that the unit has seen. His loss will be deeply felt,” the statement read.
Corporal Smith is also only the latest in a long list of special forces soldiers who have died during the 11-year war in Afghanistan. Of the 39 Australian troops killed during the war, 19 – or 49 per cent – have been either SAS troopers, commandos or special forces combat engineers.
The South Australian Premier, Jay Weatherill, also reacted to Corporal Smith’s death, saying it would be felt particularly keenly in the southern state, given hundreds of South Australian soldiers were weeks away from serving in Afghanistan.
The South Australian soldiers will come from the 7th Battalion, which is based at RAAF Base Edinburgh in Adelaide.
Unlike previous task groups, the 7 RAR element will be based mainly behind the razor wire of Tarin Kowt, Australia’s headquarters in the southern Afghan province of Oruzgan.