Limbs Lost to Enemy Fire, Women Forge a New Reality

Wilson sat on a chair as Kenyah brushed gently, and then brought her mother's hair up in a bun. She is "a happy helper," Wilson said.

The girl, now 7, tells all her friends about "handie," as she has nicknamed Wilson's artificial limb. "My daughter is definitely not bashful about telling anybody," Wilson said. "She tells other kids at school. Kids don't judge you. They think it's the coolest thing that I have a robotic arm."

But Wilson continues to shield her daughter from the discomfort and anguish of her injury. "I didn't want to take her childhood away. That's my focus -- that she is happy and enjoying life and not thinking about me. She'll ask me questions, and I'll say, 'Oh that's not for children to worry about.' "

On that winter morning, Wilson had already tied her combat boots, her right hand doing most of the work and her prosthetic holding the loop before it is tied. "I want it to be known that just because you're a female injured in combat, you don't have to give up your career and you don't have to look at yourself as disabled," she said.

She added: "I haven't met any female soldier yet who feels she shouldn't have been there."

How the world sees war-wounded women like her, she said, is a little harder to pinpoint.

"When you're in Walter Reed, you're in a bubble. I could walk around with my arm off. It's acceptable. Everyone there knows. . . . But when you walk out that gate, it's a whole different world. No one knows what I've been through, no one probably cares, and to avoid all of that, I never come outside without my [prosthetic] arm. Never."

Wilson added, "I have noticed that when you're a female walking around as an amputee, everybody's mouth drops."

Lately, she has set new career goals, aiming high, perhaps even for the Army's top enlisted job. She listened with glee to the news that Tammy Duckworth -- at whose bedside she had prayed -- had decided to run for Congress in Illinois.

Soon after, she learned about her friend's new political life, she called Duckworth, joked that she would serve as her assistant in Congress, and then reflected: "It definitely says the sky is the limit."

Scars Farther From the Surface

Long out of Walter Reed, Dawn Halfaker is also deeply into a life remade. It has been 17 months since she was wounded, and her favorite yoga tape is playing on a small VCR in an apartment in Adams Morgan. Halfaker barely seems to notice her image, which once was difficult to bear and is now reflected back at her from a large mirror: red hair and trim, athletic build, one arm extended perfectly above her head.

In place of her missing limb is a T-shirt sleeve, empty, hanging. Following along with the yoga tape, Halfaker visualizes that she still has a right arm; it helps her balance.