An elite soldier who's told a Sydney court decorated war veteran Ben Roberts-Smith bullied him for years has denied blaming others to avoid confronting his own failings.
Codenamed Person 1, the witness was called by publisher Nine Entertainment in its defence of Mr Roberts-Smith's Federal Court defamation case over 2018 newspaper articles.
The Victoria Cross recipient claims the articles included false allegations of bullying of his Special Air Service Regiment (SAS) colleagues, unlawful killings in Afghanistan and domestic violence.
Person 1 has claimed Mr Roberts-Smith twice threatened to kill him, including during a 2006 deployment where he said words to the effect of: "If your performance doesn't improve on the next patrol, you're gonna get a bullet in the back of the head."
The soldier accepted the "elementary" and "basic" mistake of forgetting machine gun oil during a June 2006 mission in the Chora Valley put the lives of his entire team at risk due to weapon stoppages while under enemy attack.
Under cross-examination, Mr Roberts-Smith's barrister Bruce McClintock SC on Friday highlighted assessments from three of Person 1's senior colleagues in 2006 that suggested he be removed from the patrol for his own safety and that of others.
Those criticisms "must have had a devastating effect", Mr McClintock suggested.
"I don't recall my feelings after reading these reports," Person 1 replied.
Mr McClintock said those colleagues, including the late Sergeant Matt Locke, had "justifiable doubts" about going on patrol with him after the Chora Valley mission.
Person 1 agreed, further accepting Mr Roberts-Smith might not have wanted to be in a position where the witness would put his life at risk again.
But he denied he'd come up with bullying allegations against Mr Roberts-Smith and two others to deal with the assessments.
"You couldn't confront the reality of your failings and you tried to blame them on other people," Mr McClintock said.
"That's incorrect," Person 1 replied, adding that he had taken accountability.
Mr McClintock showed the witness a 2013 statement he wrote raising the bullying allegations about Mr Roberts-Smith, which did not record the specific "bullet in your head" phrase Person 1 has attributed to the veteran.
"The encounter is listed, but the words specifically used weren't," Person 1 said.
The document recorded that Mr Roberts-Smith had "burst" into a team room one day and accused Person 1 of not being up to his standard for the SAS.
It recorded Mr Roberts-Smith as saying "on the next job I may get shot if my performance doesn't improve".
Mr McClintock put it to Person 1 that Mr Roberts-Smith's comment was consistent with a warning that Person 1 may be shot by the enemy.
"My client never said anything to you beyond 'if you don't improve you're going to be in trouble out there and you'll be in danger'," he said.
Person 1 disagreed and denied "fabricating" the alleged death threat.
Mr McClintock suggested things Mr Roberts-Smith said to the witness in 2006 were no more than expressions of professional opinion that Person 1 had failings as a soldier at that time.
"It's absurd to characterise any of the things my client said as genuine death threats," the barrister said.
"That's incorrect," Person 1 replied.
The trial, before Justice Anthony Besanko, will continue on Monday.
