Girl ing line
CK ON TV, BUT ARMY MEDIC TELLS OF TRUE AFGHAN HELL
were found out they would be seriously reprimanded and sent home.
“Similarly it’s easy for real-life relationships at home to break down too when you are away all the time.
“As a female medic you have responsibility for everyone and you need to keep a clear head and you can’t let anything affect your judgment or professionalism.
“But it does happen that you would get posted with an ex and you can’t help that as you are naturally drawn to people gong through similar experiences as you.” Lindsay joined the Army at the age of 19 and says becoming a medic was all she ever wanted to do.
Harder
“My dad was in the RAF so I was excited by military life. In 2008 I went off to do my basic training at Pirbright, which is where they filmed Lacey Turner doing raining in the first series of Our Girl. “Those 14 weeks were brilliant and some of the best of my career. We were all young, excited and starting our Army ourney together. “You are pushed harder as a woman, you want to compete with the boys. My passing out parade in March 2009 was an incredibly proud moment.”
In May 2009 Lyndsay went to do her medical training at Aldershot’s Keogh Barracks. She reveals: “It was incredibly ough, harder than basic raining. You are taught o deal with the absoute worst. “I was pushed to my imit in practical raining but you have to know everyhing. It was exhausting, but they were preparing us for life on the front line. After that I was posted to Catterick in North Yorkshire. I knew my regiment was about to be deployed to Afghanistan and, although I wasn’t down to go, I pestered and pestered until I was allowed.”
She was still terrified to touch down in Afghanistan. “I was scared,” she says. “At the hospital at Camp Bastion I started in the A&E department so we had the worst casualties coming in all day.
“It was really surreal. I saw people who’d lost legs, arms, legs and arms, children who’d lost limbs – the worst scenes you can ever imagine and people screaming in agony.
“Local children had lost hands from picking up bombs. A baby was brought in who’d been drowned by the Taliban in a nearby river simply for being a girl. I stayed with her and said a prayer, it was devastating.
“After the hospital I was posted out on the front line with Scots Guard Artillery up on a hill which involved carrying huge guns and weaponry at all times.
“On our first two-day patrol a massive explosion from a suicide bomber shook the ground. Rubble flew everywhere and we were stuck for seven days.
“We went down to the town and there were body parts everywhere, people were screaming.
“It was horrific and after we cleared the scene and got everyone help we just marched back up to the top of the hill and continued as if nothing had happened.
“My next position was back out with the infantry in the Nahri Saraj district of Afghan. We would patrol through towns but the weight of the equipment and the heat was so intense that I struggled so much. “Every time I got down on one knee to help someone I could barely stand up. But as the only female I didn’t want anyone to know I couldn’t keep up. Then suddenly we were shot at and adrenaline kicked in, I threw myself to the floor and started firing. It was surreal, you go into autopilot and your training kicks in.”
But it was leaving the front line that changed everything for Lyndsay.
“It was so strange to be back in the UK – I couldn’t cope with normal life. I felt like I’d seen so much in Afghan and I found it really hard to get back into the routine of normal life. My mum told me that I wasn’t the same, I’d changed.”
It was when Lyndsay was posted again out to Canada that the reality of what she was going through hit home.
She was suffering with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Skills
She said: “Suddenly I hated everything about Army life and was having flashbacks of incidents I’d seen. We were doing a fake ambush and I just broke down. I was sent home and left the Army shortly after on medical discharge.”
Thankfully she managed to rebuild her life and is using her skills and training to become a paramedic.
And this was only possible thanks to help from SSAFA – the Armed Forces Charity – which stepped in to give Lyndsay the help she needed.
She added: “I saw that the East of England Paramedic Service was recruiting student paramedics and I was desperate to get on the course.
“They accepted with open arms but told me I needed a C1 drivers’ licence for the ambulances which I didn’t have. To get one costs around £1,000 and I just didn’t have that sort of money. But thankfully SSAFA were amazing. They granted me the £1,000 straight away and I got the job. It changed my life.
“I’m now doing a job I love. Everything I went through in Afghanistan makes me a better paramedic today, I am cool under pressure and nothing I face now can faze me.”