At least 100 elite Australian soldiers from the 2nd Commando Regiment were pinned down as well-trained Taliban fighters launched a co-ordinated attack, raining machine gun fire and rocket propelled grenades on the Australian positions.

Up in the valley walls above the village, sniper Sergeant Garry Robinson fired the first Australian shots as he began picking off insurgents trying to gain the high-ground advantage.

''It was kill or be killed, I guess,'' Sergeant Robinson said on Thursday as he and two comrades laid out the battle in blow-by-blow detail never revealed before. ''They were trying to kill me and the people around me.''

The Australians beat back the onslaught only to have it flare up again that afternoon. By the end of the following day, up to 100 Taliban fighters were dead. Thirteen Australian soldiers demonstrated bravery that would eventually garner medals and commendations, including Ben Roberts-Smith, the SAS patrol sniper who stormed enemy machine guns and received the Victoria Cross for his actions.

The Shah Wali Kot offensive became one of the most ferocious – and celebrated – battles of the Afghanistan war. Now, the soldiers from the 2nd Squadron of the SAS and Second Commando Regiment will become the first Australians since Vietnam to be awarded the Battle Honour – a collective recognition of their achievements.

The operation to disrupt a key Taliban route bringing fighters and weapons – including improvised explosive device components – up to Oruzgan province was months in the planning.

The head of Australia's Special Operations Task Group – made up of the SAS and commandos – Lieutenant Colonel Paul Burns wanted not just to defeat the insurgents but to smash them so that the Australians would not have to come back in a month's time. Two days before the operation began, two Australian soldiers, Sappers Jacob Moerland and Darren Smith, had been killed by an IED in Oruzgan, where most Australians are based.

After weeks of raids to shake up the enemy, the commandos, numbering between 100 and 120, landed around the village of Chenartu. In intense summer heat that reached above 50 degrees,  the battle see-sawed throughout the 10th of June.

The fighting was so ferocious that the officer commanding, Major M (his identity must be kept secret) emptied several magazines himself – unusual for a commander who is usually focused on the big picture. In between the peaks in the action, he would sit down with village elders and hold shuras or meetings, drinking endless cups of tea – part of the broader strategy to deny the Taliban support.

The following morning, Colonel Burns received intelligence that many insurgents had moved to the village of Tizak about five kilometres to the west. A key Taliban leader had been drawn there.

If the commandos were his sledgehammer, the SAS were his laser-guided weapon, relying on ''speed, stealth and precision to target leaders''.

Colonel Burns sent in the SAS for a ''kill-capture'' mission. They landed at 9.19am on June 11, into such heavy fire they literally couldn't move. Outnumbered three to one, the 25 SAS soldiers were, Colonel Burns said, ''digging a hole with their eyelids''.

Over time, three Taliban heavy machine guns dug away at the low mounds of earth the SAS soldiers were using as cover. After killing a Taliban grenadier in a side building, Corporal Roberts-Smith charged  ''straight into the teeth of'' a machine-gun positioned in a mud-walled compound and neutralised the fire. Over the rest of the day, the SAS ''systematically broke down'' the Taliban positions in Tizak.

Not a single Australian soldier died in the two days of fighting, though three commandos were killed when a Blackhawk helicopter crashed in a follow-up operation 10 days later – Privates Tim Aplin, Ben Chuck, and  Scott Palmer.

Sniper Sergeant Robinson was seriously wounded in the same crash.

Nor were any civilians killed in the Shah Wali Kot battle. One elderly man in Tizak suffered a bullet wound to his hand, fired by an insurgent. One Australian soldier took a bullet wound to the arm and an  Afghan soldier was hit in the stomach.

Then coalition leader in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, praised the operation as exemplary of the broader counter-insurgency strategy – protecting civilians and giving the Afghans a buffer to build their government and their society. (However, the Shah Wali Kot district is still subject to frequent insurgent activity and is today sometimes even regarded as Taliban-controlled.)

At 3am on the 11th, the SAS landed back in Tarin Kowt. Their first question to Colonel Burns was: ''Hey boss? What do you want us to do now?''

One soldier showed Colonel Burns the remaining magazine in his M4 carbine weapon. It had a single round left.