Liz, 34, from Leicester is an RAF veteran who will be taking part in this year’s Invictus Games for Team UK. Competing in both wheelchair basketball and rugby, Liz joined the military at the age of 18, and served as a General Technician Mechanic with the RAF for 11 years.

In 2018, Liz was medically discharged due to a patellofemoral joint disorder and fibromyalgia, which caused headaches, body pain and fatigue. Despite experiencing physical and mental health challenges, Liz decided she didn’t want to give up. By using sports and fitness to motivate herself and manage her symptoms, she lost weight and her health improved.

She said, “My experiences in service made me the person I am today, and I enjoyed my time in the RAF."

Liz has also received support from the RBL’s Battle Back Centre for wounded, injured and sick veterans and serving personnel. She participated in a week-long multi-activity course where she had her first taste of wheelchair basketball and absolutely loved it! She found that by using a wheelchair, the strain was taken off her knee and she was able to focus on the game and enjoying sport.

“After leaving Service, joining civvy street was a scary transition and having to deal with my health issues, I found it hard to focus and motivate myself. However, I finally plucked up the courage to attend the Invictus Games taster sessions and I thought, ‘really, what have I got to lose?’.

Tilly, 42, had always wanted to be in the Armed Forces from a young age and dreamed of becoming an Officer. So, when the British Army came to her small Fiji island on a recruitment drive, Tilly decided to apply, along with around 5,000 other applicants. From that first round, only 50 people were selected, and Tilly was one of nine women in that number. In 2004, Tilly took a chance and decided to join up.

After training, Tilly was posted straight out to Iraq for her first overseas tour. She said, “It was a shock to go out there for my first tour, but to experience the new sounds and sights, it was scary and dangerous, but being there with your comrades all together was just unlike anything I had done before."

In the last three years of Tilly’s service, she began to suffer from PTSD, but was reluctant to report to the medical centre as she didn’t want it to affect any potential for a promotion. She explained, “I just lived with it and masked it for years and would just carry on as if the feelings I was having were normal. I had suicidal thoughts and low moods, and I just thought, ‘well, that’s part of what I have been through’. Later, after suffering a knee injury, it wasn’t my mental health that led to my medical discharge, but my physical health.”

During that period, sport always kept Tilly going, it gave her focus and motivation. Tilly had always been an athlete and had been a keen member of the Army rugby team. She knew that training her body helps her mental health.

Having come from a strong military background, Gael passed a recruiting office in Canterbury in 1968 - having worked as a Pathology Technician for the past eight years - and decided to join up there and then.

As a Captain in Episkopi, Cyprus, overseeing the evacuation of foreign tourists, Cypriots and their families during the Cyprus Emergency 1974, she was awarded the MBE. Later, stationed in Germany, she worked with the Intelligence Corps and then, in the 1980s, she was part of two studies examining women’s roles in the Army, and concluded that there should not be a separate Corps of women. 

In 1989, she became Director of the Women’s Royal Army Corps, and, despite significant opposition, she oversaw its disbandment on 5 April 1992, and the full integration of women into the British Army.

She was the first woman to command a Brigade of 60,000 soldiers, despite it being referred to as ‘Aldershot Area’. She left the Army in 1985 as a Brigadier and awarded a CBE.