Combat Prosthetics: Recovering the Literature of the Wounded Female Soldier in the War on Terror

Since the War on Terror began, female troops have increasingly participated in combat operations. Even as the wars have created the first known cluster of female combat amputees, their stories are rarely represented or studied. This neglect has resulted in physical and mental health consequences. This article addresses this omission through an analysis of literary representations of injured female troops by Gologorsky, Proulx, and Schultz. I argue that these texts call attention to women as what Mitchell and Snyder call narrative prostheses—artificial supports to male troops—and begin to redress misreadings of their role in contemporary war.