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

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Liz McConaghy was the only female crew member on the Chinook wing for four years (Picture: Liz McConaghy).

She was also the only female ‘crewman’ on the Chinook wing for four years and the longest serving as well. It’s a chapter in my book, it’s not an anchor that I wear around my legs forever or a new label that I have to have forever,” she said. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.

With close family ties to Middle Wallop, Liz is thrilled to be delivering this event in the fabulous surroundings of the Hayward Hall at the Army Flying Museum.

Repeatedly witnessing horrific events, Liz’s mental health began to deteriorate and culminated in an attempt to take her own life in 2020.This then turned into journaling, and three weeks after putting pen to paper, Liz had unknowingly written a book. The biggest honour of all her duties, however, was serving on the Medical Emergency Response Team (MERT), or the flying ambulance as it was more commonly known. 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. The first thing you notice is the dust being kicked up off the ground surrounding the aircraft as the bullets get closer, then the distinctive ‘ting, ting, ting’ as they begin to hit the metal of the aircraft frame.

We're extremely proud to honour Liz as our Inspirational Woman of the Year 2023 and would like to express our deepest gratitude for her altruism and dedication to uplifting the lives of others. A couple of my mates knew that I was suffering a little bit and they say, ‘how are you Liz,’ and I [was] like ‘ohh yeah living the dream’ and if they asked a second time, it was sometimes enough to crack the egg shell. When we landed, the engineers actually dug it out of the other side of the aircraft and gave it to me. Emphasising the importance of looking after wellbeing and mental health, Liz encourages others to reach out for help when struggling.But I wasn’t a trailblazer either, there were crew gals before me, and plenty came after me and will continue to do so. Encouraging people to learn from her sobering and life-changing experience, Liz shares how she would look after the mental health and wellbeing of others, but forget her own wellbeing in the meantime. Her career saw her amass two deployments to Iraq and 10 to Helmand, Afghanistan, in support of Operation Herrick, which gave her an insightful and very personal perspective on war. Liz is sure to enthral audiences with tales from dodging bullets to saving soldiers, along with witnessing the brutality and loss of war which found her bringing the battlefield home despite her fighting days being over.

With its raw honesty, profound insights, and sheer inspiration, this book truly stands out as a testament to the indomitable spirit of those who serve. If it’s anything less than something that really lights your fire, you’re never going to get up and give it 100%, commit everything and throw yourself in headfirst. Candidly speaking about her suicide attempt, she emphasises the importance of looking after mental health and urges audience members to seek professional help. Each stretcher had a flag over the body, I remember the Union Jack, the Rifles flag and a Liverpool flag.She said: "I used to be there for the guys who used to come back from some of the MERT flights and be really Anyone who’s lost someone to suicide can kind of hear my story and realise they couldn’t have done anything to help. If your score isn't where you'd like it to be, think about the things you love, the activities that bring you joy, and consciously integrate them into your day. On Wednesday August 12, 2020, McConaghy woke up and decided that “today was going to be my last day on Earth”. I always used to look at the casualties and the bodies that we pick up on MERT as just a really precious piece of freight because I think if I start to humanise them then that really would have been the start of the undoing of me and I think a lot of people felt the same," McConaghy said.