In November 2004, Duckworth was flying a Black Hawk helicopter that was shot by a rocket-propelled grenade. The shot went through the aircraft and through her legs. After losing half the blood in her body she was taken to Walter Reed Hospital for treatment. After months of rehabilitation and surgeries, she now wears prosthetic legs and is able to walk and serve in the reserves.

SM: What was it like waking up in the hospital after your helicopter was shot?
Tammy Duckworth: The initial reaction was confusion and then the doctors and nurses kept using the words “helicopter crash.” To a pilot, “crash” is not a good word. My last memory is of us landing the helicopter and me reaching up trying to shut off the engines after we were on the ground. So when I’m laying there and I’ve been told that I have lost my legs and the doctors and nurses kept saying I was in a “helicopter crash,” I thought I had not completed the landing. I became very despondent and thought “I deserve to lose my legs if I didn’t do my job as a pilot and land.” Because when you’re in that role, there are other people in that aircraft that don’t have access to the controls and you have a responsibility to your buddies to do your job.

Duckworth eventually found out that she did in fact land the helicopter and do her job that day. She said she had been less depressed about losing her legs and more about not completing her job, but that changed after her husband showed her a picture of her helicopter safely on the ground with holes from the rocket-propelled grenade that struck it.

SM: When you learned that you did land the helicopter, how did you feel?
Duckworth: Once I knew that I did my job until what would have been my last breath on earth, that’s all that matters. And I did, I literally did my job until I passed out from blood loss. That’s all I can ask of myself, so everything after that is doable. I can be as frustrated as I need to be with trying to put on my artificial legs, but it really doesn’t matter because I know that on the day that I needed to do what I was supposed to do, I did. It’s been a very freeing, liberating thing.