SAN DIEGO, Calif.--Christina Douglas was injured -- "You'll never be able to fly again."

That's what doctors told UH-1 pilot 1st Lt. Christina Douglas when she broke her back less than a year and a half ago.

On Jan. 2, 2007, her UH-1 crashed into a mountainside while flying a routine mission with Operation Jumpstart supporting the Border Patrol. Miraculously all nine people and the K-9 onboard survived.

But Lt. Douglas was hurt, and she knew it. "I knew immediately after we hit the ground that my back was broken. I felt a tingling in my lower back, and it felt very unstable."

During eight hours of surgery doctors performed a spinal fusion and placed titanium rods and screws in her back.

For two months she couldn't move at all and remained flat on her back. The third month she began to move around a bit, and by the fourth month, to everyone's amazement, she was back at work performing light duty.

"I knew after 12 weeks when I could sit up and started moving around that I'd be fine," said Douglas.

And one year after the accident she ran a half marathon.

"I never believed what the doctors told me," she said.

She continued to pursue a waiver which would allow her to return to flight status. And again, to everyone's amazement, for the first time in history, the U.S. Army granted flight status to an aircrew member with a spinal fusion.

On June 10, 1st Lt. Christina Douglas climbed back into the right seat of a UH-1 and read the checklists for her crew, returning gracefully to her duties as co-pilot. She was at the controls as they flew the exact flight path she had flown just 16 months earlier, out above the San Diego harbor, down the Coronado coastline toward the U.S./Mexico border, and then east toward Otay mountain where the crash had occurred.

"I circled above the crash site.... way above the crash site," recalled Douglas. "It was very strange being there again, seeing it from that perspective. It brought back a lot of memories."

She said she felt very nervous, excited, and yet somehow relieved. It had been such a long time.

Douglas spent many hours prior to the flight back in the books, making sure she knew all of the emergency procedures and systems limitations by heart. She is scheduled to begin training on the UH-60 soon as the UH-1s she has been flying are being gradually phased out of the National Guard.

"There's a sense of closure for me now. I flew in the same type aircraft with Operation Jumpstart, and I flew right along the same route at about the same time of day that we crashed," said Douglas. "Now I have a sense of relief, and I feel content."

The road to earning one's wings in the U.S. military is long and challenging. Many aspiring aviators will attempt and only a few will succeed. Being told you will never again fly is for most aviators unbearably painful.

This young woman saw a different forecast for her life than her doctors did, and chose to fight to fly again. She wears the wings she earned proudly on her chest. Her bravery in the face of a long and painful road to recovery have revealed an honorable young Soldier with a promising career as a pilot before her.