Veterans are their own worst enemy.” McConaghy explained. “We never ask for help, mostly because it’s been bred into us. You’ve got to be strong. You’ve got to be resilient. All those things that the military teach you to be becomes your make-up. So, it’s really hard to ask for help when you’re getting out [of the military] or are out. The truth [is] none. The crewmen never once made me feel as though I was an outsider or special for being female. But I wasn’t a trailblazer either, there were crew gals before me, and plenty came after me and will continue to do so.” Yes, I have,” she said. “Having had the book come out [all her mental health challenges are] now completely out in the world. And the more I’m talking about it, the more it is genuinely OK now.

Does McConaghy have any words of wisdom for people thinking of following the same kind of career path?With her hands tied together, McConaghy felt it “roll down my chest and all the way to my belly button. Still makes me cringe now thinking about it. But at least it distracted me from the screaming”. This, it seems, saved her life. McConaghy started receiving counselling for PTSD from the charity Help For Heroes, and “cried for months, finally letting go of all the tears I had stored up inside me over the years that I had never let leak out from my eyes for fear of displaying weakness”.

From 2007 McConaghy crewed the Medical Emergency Response Team (MERT), a high-octane M.A.S.H-style air ambulance service in which a Chinook was on constant readiness at Bastion to fly to the middle of the battlefield and rescue seriously wounded soldiers. On her busiest day of operations in 2008, she and her crew flew 14 separate sorties – including one where five British soldiers had been killed at a forward operating base. Liz became the longest serving female Chinook aircrew member after serving for 17 years. Liz reflects on why she stayed for so long, and why she eventually had to leave. Liz eloquently describes her journey through her time serving with one of the finest services in the world"I wrote the book when I was going through my PTSD counselling, and it took me 3 weeks to write because I just had to brain dump everything and it [was] just stored on my laptop and I never thought about it. Then a friend of mine and I were out walking and I mentioned it and she was like you’ve got to send this off to a publisher, what happens if somebody wants to publish it? Then it got published. It was never written in any way to be read by anyone, never mind the whole world, but seemingly everyone has really enjoyed it.