Former army colleagues have questioned the emotional backstory of an ex-Australian Defence Force finance clerk who competed on The Voice over her experiences in Afghanistan.

Crissy Ashcroft appeared on Nine’s The Voice Australia in May last year dressed in her full army uniform and sang a stirring rendition of Cold Chisel’s “When the War is Over”.

“In 2009, I deployed to Afghanistan and I saw things that I can’t unsee. They will be with me forever,” Ashcroft told the camera as she broke down in tears.

“For me, I want my war to be over.”

Ashcroft’s blind audition was successful, with judge Delta Goodrem turning her chair. Ashcroft then opened up to the judges and audience with more of her story.

“I got deployed to Afghanistan and got pretty badly injured. Physical and mental scars, and I can’t be in the army anymore. I want to be. I can’t. I have pretty bad PTSD,” she said.

However, nine.com.au has spoken to several army veterans who served with Ashcroft during her six month deployment to Afghanistan from December 2009 to mid-2010 who say her role during that time was a sedentary one, as a finance clerk.

Promotional material , prepared by Ashcroft’s close friend Kay Danes, claims Ashcroft is “Australia’s first female soldier to fight 'outside the wire' in Afghanistan with Australian Commandos".

“Australian Special Forces realised that women could play a unique role on a Special Operations team: accompanying male colleagues on raids and, while those soldiers were searching for insurgents, question (sic) the mothers, sisters, daughters and wives living at the compound. More importantly, a soldier like Ashcroft could search adult women for weapons and gather crucial intelligence,” the material reads.

Ashcroft with Prince Harry at the Invictus Games.

Ashcroft is also identified as Australia’s first female soldier to fight “outside the wire” in an online blurb by Claxton Speakers International, who offer her services for a reported $7000 fee.

Ashcroft, who represented Australia in last year’s Invictus Games and was photographed alongside Prince Harry and former US president George Bush, has not yet responded to Nine.com.au’s requests for comment.

But Ms Danes said the former veteran of 14 years “never claimed that she was the first Australian female solider to fight outside the wire”.

Ms Danes said she got it wrong in the promotional material she had prepared to send to book publishers and had since asked for the PDF file to be taken down from the internet.

According to Ms Danes, her friend was injured in Afghanistan getting out of a vehicle.

“She never claimed that she was blown up. She hurt her shoulder. I believe she was getting out of a vehicle,” Ms Danes said.

“She has never claimed that she got PTSD from battle-related activity,” she said, adding that it was a combination of things that was happening in her personal life that caused Ashcroft’s mental health problems.

When asked about the story Ashcroft presented on The Voice, Ms Danes said she could understand why some people would draw the conclusion that she was suffering from PTSD as a result of her time in Afghanistan, but this was “technically” not the case.

“When you put it like that I can see how people would think that, but what I’m saying is that she never got PTSD from battle activity in Afghanistan,” she said.

Nine.com.au has spoken to two former officers with the Special Operations Task Group (SOTG) who served with Ashcroft in Afghanistan who said army protocol dictated that Ashcroft would never have been put in a combat situation in Afghanistan.

“It’s absolute garbage because female service people do not fight outside the wire, especially in operational situations like that,” one of the officers claimed.

“They deploy outside the wire, yes, but she certainly would not have the skill sets to go out on a patrol with SASR (Special Air Service Regiment). And her age and experience and fitness level would mitigate that as well.

“I know intimately what her roles and responsibilities were. Finance clerk, that’s it. She would sit in the pay office and she would process people’s forms and enter that stuff into Microsoft excel. That is it.”

Ashcroft on deployment in Afghanistan. According to one of her former colleagues the photos were taken at the army base during a session when non-combat troops were given to fire weapons they wouldn't normally use.

Former CEO of RSL NSW, Glenn Kolomeitz, who was assigned to SOTG in Afghanistan during Ashcroft’s entire secondment there, told Nine.com.au it was likely Ashcroft did go “outside the wire” but this would have been in a support role for the purposes of engagement with local Afghani women, not a combat one.

“I cannot think of an occasion when one of these engagements resulted in a TIC (troops in contact with the enemy) scenario which would result in Cristine Ashcroft being injured. Certainly none of mine ever did,” Mr Kolomeitz said.

Mr Kolomeitz, who is now working as a lawyer, said he was moved to speak out about Ashcroft because of his work in helping veterans get proper support and compensation for PTSD.

“I, and many other veterans’ advocates and lawyers, have had to fight tooth and nail to get DVA (The Department of Veterans’ Affairs) to accept PTSD as being war-caused in the case of many of our clients,” he said.

“More often than not we have to fight to have the diagnosis and/or causation accepted, i.e., that stressors encountered on operations caused the PTSD.

“I do not want to appear to be disparaging of another veteran, particularly with respect to mental health conditions, but commentary questioning the cause of such conditions makes it all the more difficult for us to get veterans over the line with DVA.”

Cristine Ashcroft pictured with former US president George Bush at the Invictus Games.

Concerns about Ashcroft’s story were first raised by the ANZMI (Australia and New Zealand Imposters Group) website earlier this week. The website claims it has obtained four statutory declarations from army personnel, three of which came from veterans who served on the same deployment as Ashcroft in Afghanistan, casting doubt on whether she had ever experienced combat.

In a statement the Department of Defence said it was aware of the ANZMI article. The department could not comment on details of individual service records “due to privacy constraints”, the statement said.