EXCLUSIVE: Liz McConaghy deployed to Afghanistan ten times and revealed the powerful lengths UK medics would go to to honour America’s war dead.
Liz McConaghy’s last mission in Afghanistan was to collect the body of a fallen US soldier (Image: Getty)
A former RAF medic who evacuated countless numbers of troops from the frontline in Afghanistan has revealed what she would say to Donald Trump if she ever got the chance. Liz McConaghy deployed to Afghanistan ten times, working as a crew member on the Medical Evacuation Response Flights (MERT) that would often collect casualties from the middle of firefights.
Ms McConaghy was responding to comments made in a Fox News interview in which he once more suggested that NATO allies didn’t fight on the frontlines. Mr Trump reiterated comments he made earlier this month about the doubts he has about how reliable NATO members would be if the US called upon them in the future.
He said: “I’ve always said, will they be there if we ever needed them? That’s really the ultimate test. I’m not sure of that. We’ve never needed them.
Liz McConaghy said that medics treated soldiers of all nations the same (Image: )
“They’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan and this or that. And they did. They stayed a little back, off the front lines.”
Ms McConaghy reminded the US President that NATO did step up on the one and only occasion that article 5 was triggered, which was by the United States in the wake of the attacks on September 11.
She told the Daily Express how she would like to show Donald Trump the list of every US service person her and her comrades risked their lives to save.
She said: “We picked up so many Americans, we risked our lives to rescue them, for him to say that is really hurtful. I would like to show him my logbook of every flight we took and every American we picked up. We risked our lives to bring soldiers back and save the lives of anybody, regardless of where they were from.
“The last body I ever collected was an American soldier. We took the aircraft to a Forward Operating Base called FOB Edinburgh in Helmand and because it was secure we were able to shut the rotors down as a mark of respect while the American soldiers placed the flag around him and paid their respects.
“We stood on the ramp while his coffin was loaded onto the aircraft and we treated him with the respect we treat a British soldier. If I ever meet him, I would tell him that.”
She added: “We would land on the frontline, we had to land where the casualties were and couldn’t just expect the fighting to stop while we did so. We would get ambushed by the Taliban because they knew we were coming and the MERT is a high-value target. It would be a massive hearts and minds victory for them if they shot it down.”
A total of 457 British soldiers lost their lives serving in Afghanistan, the second highest number of military deaths behind the US.
Liz has written a bestselling book detailing the aftermath of service and highlighting issues that are a daily battle for thousands of veterans who, contrary to the president’s comments, deployed to and beyond the frontline.
She continued: “In the years after, I didn’t manage it well and eventually I had a meltdown. One night I had manic insomnia and I ended up Googling all the soldiers I picked up, humanising them and it led to me taking an overdose and trying to end my life. It caught up with me.
“His comments make you feel dismissed and I know a lot of people are feeling like that today. I have had mothers of boys killed reach out to me to say it wasn’t for nothing but it makes it very difficult when the leader of the free world tells us we didn’t matter, he should have more respect. What he said will have triggered so many people’s PTSD.”
MERT teams deployed into highly kinetic conditions to save the lives of countless soldiers (Image: Getty)
Her comments were echoed by Andrew Fox, a former Parachute Regiment officer, who served three tours of Afghanistan including one attached to US Special Forces.
He said: “My feelings hearing the comments could best be described as shock, anger and betrayal. Shock and anger that the sacrifice of friends is so easily forgotten and betrayal because we served alongside them. I have an American combat infantryman’s badge and jump wings so for their Commander-in-Chief to say what he said is a disgrace.”
In his second term in office, Trump has fractured the NATO alliance significantly after being highly critical in his first term.
His ongoing pursuit of Greenland, a NATO territory and his appeasement of Vladimir Putin in contrast with a firm approach to Ukraine has left allies floundering to hold the alliance together.
Fox believes his latest comments are simply a means of weakening the foundations of the alliance in lieu of outright withdrawing the country from it.
He added: “He is just undermining NATO that is the long and short of it. In his small cack-handed brain, he is perhaps trying to inspire other NATO allies to increase defence spending but he is undermining the alliance. The problem is, NATO is now a zombie. The US is not going to come to anybody’s defence and if there is no article 5 that you can rely on there is no NATO.”
