Chinook Crew 'Chick': Highs and Lows of Forces Life from the Longest Serving Female RAF Chinook Force Crewmember

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When we landed, the engineers actually dug it out of the other side of the aircraft and gave it to me.

Chinook Force Crewmember Exclusive Interview: Liz McConaghy - Chinook Force Crewmember

Liz is one of six women who has served as a loadmaster in the RAF, and for four years, was the only female crewman on the Chinook wing.Suddenly you take that badge off and you’re not wearing it every day it’s hard to figure out who you are. Liz saw Camp bastion grow from a barbed wire fence surrounding an area of tents in the sand to a huge Operating Base it became.

Chinook crew ‘chick’ Liz McConaghy on PTSD and military life Chinook crew ‘chick’ Liz McConaghy on PTSD and military life

With her hands tied together, McConaghy felt it “roll down my chest and all the way to my belly button. The self-styled crew ‘chick’ has recently published her memoir about her time serving on the Royal Air Force’s Chinook helicopter. Then in 2002, we were over there doing some tasking and I said, ‘can we go back and take the aircraft in the school? The first time I went, there was an army commander in the theatre, and he made me go and stay in a girl’s tent because you aren’t allowed mixed accommodation, and I was so miserable.Still to this day I really struggle to see a Union Jack flag without getting overwhelmed with memories. Liz continued , “I was really pleased they did that and then I was always really lucky because the lads would put me in a corner bed space so I could put a little towel up like a little flag and have a little cubby hole to get changed. It can simply be a chapter of your life that can be learned from and, most importantly, moved on from. In an exclusive interview with Liz McConaghy, the longest serving female RAF Chinook Force Crew member, Liz describes how it all started, and the challenges she faced during and after leaving the RAF. AeroTime sat down with McConaghy to talk about the Chinook, women in the military and the importance of talking about our mental health.

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Her best friend Anna died of cancer, and the marriage to her Special Forces husband – whom she’d met serving in Iraq – fell apart, ending in divorce. She was also on the last 1310 Flight deployment there as the British forces withdrew 10 years later handing it back to the Afghan National Army.From being shot at, kidnapped and smuggled… this is a story of unbelievable resilience from two inspirational young girls. Growing up in the countryside near Newtownards, 10 miles east of Belfast, McConaghy had no real desire to join the forces until visiting her brother at the nearby British Army Palace Barracks, where she happened to read a magazine with a photo on the cover of a man hanging out of a helicopter. Bull started ski paddling at the age of 16 for surf lifesaving and was the Under 17 Australian Ironwoman Champion in 2012. I’ve met so many people via social media who tag themselves as the broken soldier or the forgotten veteran.