Her body was maimed by war. Dawn Halfaker lay unconscious at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, her parents at her bedside and her future suddenly uncertain. A rocket-propelled grenade had exploded in her Humvee, ravaging her right arm and shoulder.

In June 2004, she became the newest soldier to start down a path almost unknown in the United States: woman as combat amputee.

She endured days of intense pain and repeated surgeries and struggled to eat on her own, write left-handed and use an artificial limb. Scattered among her experiences were moments when she was aware that few women before her had rethought their lives, their bodies, their choices, in this way.

She was part of a new generation of women who have lost pieces of themselves in war, experiencing the same physical trauma and psychological anguish as their male counterparts. But for female combat amputees has come something else: a quiet sense of wonder about how the public views them and how they will reconcile themselves.

Their numbers are small:11 in three years of war, compared with more than350 men. They have discovered, at various points of their recovery, that gender has made a difference -- "not better or worse," as Halfaker put it, "just different."

For Halfaker, an athlete with a strong sense of her physical self, the world was transformed June 19, 2004, on a night patrol through Baqubah, Iraq. Out of nowhere had come the rocket-propelled grenade, exploding behind her head.

"Get us out of the kill zone!" she yelled to the Humvee driver. She was a 24-year-old first lieutenant. As medics worked to stabilize her, she warned: "You bastards better not cut my arm off."

In the hospital, there had been no other way to save her life.

IRAQ IS FIRST

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.

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.

MOM'S PERPSECTIVE

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 OK," 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 to 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 6-year-old daughter, Kenyah, said when she arrived, hugging her. And then: "Mommy, I thought you died."

By mid-2005, Juanita Wilson, 32, was back to the rhythms of daily life with her husband and daughter. The couple bought a house in the suburbs of Baltimore. She took a new job with the Army, is a staff sergeant and is up for a promotion.

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.' "

APPEARANCE MATTERS

Long out of Walter Reed, Dawn Halfaker is also deeply into a life remade. She retired from the Army as a captain -- a tough choice only four years out of West Point, but one she made as she tried to imagine fitting back into military culture.

Lately, she works at an office in Arlington, Va., mostly as a consultant to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. She has applied to graduate school in security studies, bought a condo in Washington and co-wrote a book proposal about postwar recovery.

In her apartment, Halfaker often bends and stretches into yoga poses, her artificial arm lying beside a mirror. More functional prosthetics did little good for her type of injury, she found. So she persuaded prosthetic artists at Walter Reed to make this one -- lightweight and natural-looking, easier on her body, allowing her to blend in with the outside world.

Halfaker goes without a prosthetic when she is exercising: jogging or snowboarding or lobbing tennis balls.

"I never really wanted to hide the fact that I was an amputee," she said, "but I never wanted it to be the central focus of my life." For some men, she said, it seems a badge of honor that they do not mind showing. "For a woman, at least for me, it's not at all.... The fact that I only have one arm, I'm OK with that, but I want to be able to walk around and look like everyone else and not attract attention to myself."