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

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Now hired as a popular motivational speaker, Liz McConaghy shares her heartfelt stories of battling mental health in the RAF. Emphasising the importance of looking after wellbeing and mental health, Liz encourages others to reach out for help when struggling. Turning adversity into positivity, Liz’s talks focus on finding hope and overcoming adversity, sharing anecdotes from the darkest times in her life and how she has emerged from the darkest of places. If you are looking for a military veteran with a truly inspirational story to tell who will provide audiences with the tools needed to build the path to a new life, look no further than Liz McConaghy. What follows is sketchy, but the next memory McConaghy has is waking up from a 40-hour coma in a hospital bed in Basingstoke. Miraculously, she had survived. But how? It turns out, after swallowing the pills, she had called Samaritans and the emergency services. Liz talks to us about her flying career, the mighty Chinook and the after-effects of war, stress and the impact on her mental health. Liz was only 21 when she became the youngest Chinook crewmember to serve in Iraq, and then became the longest serving female member.

This is a unique tale that only Liz could tell, which ends with her battling the memories that haunted her long after she had left the battlefield. Air Mail. RAF Association, October - December 2022 WE NEED YOUR HELP, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google or your podcast playing app. The good thing about the Chinook”Liz explained , “compared to something like the Puma and even the Merlin is that it’s got a lot of redundant space. So you can take a lot around you, a lot of battle damage and as long as the engines are still running and you are still going, then you’re okay.Forces TV Interview https://www.forces.net/mental-health/how-one-female-chinook-crewman-turned-her-life-around-after-nearly-ending-it-all However, her most significant honour of all her duties was serving on the Medical Emergency Response Team, or MERT, flying ambulance as it was more commonly known. This involved recovering wounded soldiers from the battlefield, often under fire. When I was reading about the simulated torture scenarios she had to get through, I was absolutely shivering inside. How anyone can get through that kind of thing for real, I just don't know. Man's inhumanity to man clearly knows no bounds.

We are joined by Liz McConaghy . Liz is from a small town in County Down and spent a total of seventeen years flying with the RAF’s Chinook Force.

Chinook Crew Chick

I think if you want that extra ‘ohh, isn’t she amazing? Look, she’s the girl doing this job,’ you’re almost saying that they’re not capable of it in the first place.’ Because it’s so hard to identify a firing point where the rounds are coming from, you just have to stand your ground at the mini-gun and pray that there’s a little Ready Brek glow surrounding you.”

The bad stuff is the same stuff that everyone else goes through, not so much the PTSD and mental health.” It all became very normal and was just another day at work, so I didn’t realise at the time the effect it was having on my mental health.”After calmly writing a suicide note to her family and friends, she began to swallow 95 pills, one by one, before closing her eyes for one last time, “my brain finally at peace”. Hopefully, Liz McConaghy’s exposure of her own experiences will serve to help others. She tells her story well and it will be an ‘eye opener’ for those who have had little or no exposure to the harsher consequences inherent in service life. RAF Historical Society Journal 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.” Help for Heroes changed my life. They helped me find me again. They made me feel seen once again. And I’m really moving forward into a positive space in life.” Life changing