The incident occurred during the same 2004 SAS deployment that led to Willie Apiata being awarded the Victoria Cross. The SAS contingent was located inside a US special forces base at Kandahar airport, in the south of Afghanistan. “The boys would go out on 14-to 21-day missions. While they were out, the support staff had little to do.”

On this ill-fated occasion, while the SAS troopers were out on patrol, the US special forces found themselves short of medics and asked for an NZSAS medic to take on a raid. The SAS commander agreed to the request. A medic named Corporal B (name withheld for privacy reasons) was assigned to provide medical support for a raid on an Afghan village.

There are very strict rules about what medical staff can do in war. A medic is a protected person under international law, a non-combatant, which carries an obligation not to take part in hostilities. As New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) lawyer Lieutenant Colonel Larry Maybee wrote in an internal report about a different operation: “Medical personnel are only to be required to perform duties which are consistent with their protected status under the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols.” Specifically, a medic can only ever shoot in self-defence or to protect wounded people under their care. These are very important and long-standing rules of war.

As the US forces approached a compound in the village, some people inside started shooting at them. Corporal B joined the US forces in firing back, killing two of the shooters.

This was not at all what a medic should do – as the SAS commanders later concluded; it wasn’t self-defence because he had the option not to take part in the fighting, which was part of an offensive operation against the villages. Engaging in the assault went directly against the NZDF rules for a medic and the Geneva Conventions.

But it was worse than this, because children had joined the adults in trying to defend the compound. When the US team moved forward, they were met by the sight of the dead bodies of two boys, aged about 12 or 13. The children reminded Corporal B of his own sons, who were a similar age. He was certain he had shot the boys and “it really damaged him. He was thinking, ‘Shit, I’ve killed kids’... He was in an awful position,” says the ex-SAS member sitting at my dining table. “He came unstuck.

“He came back to Kandahar and was a mess. He was angry at [the SAS commanders] for sending him into that and, when it turned to custard, for turning on him.” In the weeks following the incident, the US forces wanted to give Corporal B a medal for helping, they said, to protect their troops. But the SAS said no to this. They were thinking of court-martialling him – arguing that, as a medic, he wasn’t supposed to be shooting people as part of an assault. “The US was saying Silver Star, the NZDF court-martial and [Corporal B] was thinking about the boys,” the ex-SAS member tells me.

In response to questions from North & South, an NZDF spokesperson denied officers had considered court-martialling Corporal B. The ex-SAS member, however, is emphatic that they did.

This was a different kind of mess to the Hit & Run raid. The issue here related to the role of a medic – and, in this case, it was children with guns who were killed, not innocent civilians. What they have in common is that both incidents should have been faced squarely and investigated properly. Instead, it appears both were covered up.

In Australia, an official investigation is currently under way, headed by New South Wales judge Paul Brereton, into many allegations of unlawful actions by Australian special forces. The inquiry was instigated by the Australian military, which has publicly called on military staff to come forward with any further allegations.

In contrast, NZDF is currently spending millions of public dollars trying to fight the government’s Hit & Run raid inquiry, and its actions following the Corporal B incident were truly bizarre.

A curious thing about our Defence Force is how much effort it puts into its public image, far beyond a normal government agency. Bad news is nearly always hidden, while 50-60 public relations staff pour out flattering stories, which are often the sole source of information on military operations – meaning most of what we see of Defence has been carefully scripted by NZDF itself to make it look good. In the period after the Corporal B incident, the SAS was in the midst of a campaign of self-promotion, including a TV series on New Zealand’s “most famous”, “most revered” fighting unit, and had plans for a movie and book about Willie Apiata’s Victoria Cross.

It would be the same with the medic and dead children. An apparent breach of rules became a PR opportunity. Instead of court-martialling Corporal B, they decided to give him a medal. On the same day Apiata’s VC was announced, 2 July 2007, an unnamed SAS soldier referred to – for national security reasons – as “Corporal B” was given this country’s third-highest medal, a New Zealand Gallantry Decoration. It was the same Corporal B – but there was no mention of dead children, the Geneva Conventions or that he was a medic.

Prime Minister Helen Clark said Corporal B’s award was “for displaying outstanding courage and leadership, and accepting extraordinary risks... testimony to the dedication, skill and professionalism of the NZSAS”. It seems very unlikely she had been told about the earlier plans for court-martial, or about the shot boys. The NZDF press release said, “For operational reasons no further details will be released.”

Corporal B had left the SAS and NZDF by the time of the award. He had quit within months of the deployment, upset and disillusioned. The ex-SAS member at my table was disgusted by the whole thing. “Courage, commitment, integrity,” – the NZDF’s espoused values – “they’re joke words and no one will be held to account over them,” he says. “I’m pleased to be out. There was so much crap.”