Seven years after the attacks that plunged America into war, the White House announces a troop reduction in the Persian Gulf. Eight thousand soldiers will come home by February. In his bed at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Sgt. 1st Class Joshua Ferguson watches the news on television but seems distracted. It’s no longer his primary fight.

His combat in Iraq ended in the spring of 2007. Today his fight is with his own body. In a little room along Ward 57 of the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Unit, he sprawls across an unmade bed in a pair of short pants. Thick surgical stitching criss-crosses his left knee, which is now the furthest extension of his left leg.