Limbs Lost to Enemy Fire, Women Forge a New Reality

"I didn't want to know what I looked like," she recalled recently. She asked her mother to get a towel and cover the mirror in her hospital room.

New Terrain, New Perils

The Iraq war is the first in which so many women have had so much exposure to combat -- working in a wide array of jobs, with long deployments, in a place where hostile fire has no bounds. In all, more than 370 women have been wounded in action and 34 have been killed by hostile fire.

The war has created what experts believe is the nation's first group of female combat amputees. "We're unaware of any female amputees from previous wars," said historian Judy Bellafaire of the Women in Military Service for America Memorial Foundation, which researches such issues.

Surprising many political observers, the fact of female casualties has produced little public reaction. Before Iraq, many assumed that the sight of women in body bags or with missing limbs would provoke a wave of public revulsion.

"On the whole, the country has not been concerned about female casualties," said Charles Moskos of Northwestern University, a leading military sociologist. Politically, Moskos said, it is a no-win issue. Conservatives fear they will undermine support for the war if they speak out about wounded women, and liberals worry they will jeopardize support for women serving in combat roles by raising the subject, he said.

In the hospital, female combat amputees face all the challenges men do -- with a few possible differences. Women, for example, seem to care more about appearance and be more expressive about their experiences, hospital staff members said. Among the women, there also was "a unique understanding or bond," said Capt. Katie Yancosek, an occupational therapist at Walter Reed.

The advent of female combat amputees has left an enduring impression on many hospital staff members. "We have learned not to underestimate or be overly skeptical about how these women will do," said Amanda Magee, a physician's assistant in the amputee care program. "Sometimes they arrive in really bad shape, and people are really worried. . . . But we've learned they can move on from a devastating injury as well as any man."

Motherhood Redefined

Two months after Dawn Halfaker was wounded, Juanita Wilson arrived on a stretcher at Walter Reed, her left arm in bandages, her hand gone. It was August 25, 2004, just days after a roadside bomb went off under Wilson's Humvee. She came to the hospital as the Iraq war's fourth female combat amputee -- the first who was a mother.

From the beginning, Wilson decided she did not want her only child to see her so wounded. She talked to the 6-year-old by phone. "Mommy's okay," she assured the girl. "What are you doing at school now?"

It was only after four weeks that Wilson allowed her husband and child to travel from Hawaii, where the family had been stationed, for a visit. By then, Wilson was more mobile. She asked a nurse put makeup on her face, stowed her IV medications into a backpack she could wear and planned an outing to Chuck E. Cheese's.

"Mommy, I'm sorry you got hurt," her daughter, Kenyah, said when she arrived, hugging her. And then: "Mommy, I thought you died."

The sort of mother who mailed her daughter penmanship exercises and math problems from the war zone, Wilson wanted Kenyah to stay focused on school and the ordinary concerns of being 6. "I wanted it to be like I was going to be okay when she saw me," said Wilson, 32.