Shrapnel seared the left side of Tracy Reep's face. The rocket-propelled grenade that spewed shrapnel did its damage quickly, ripping two fingers from his left hand and severely wounding his shoulder, hand and elbow.

The Nov. 11, 2003, ambush on a road in Iraq left Reep blind in his left eye and ended his tour as a Texas Army National Guard member. It also meant that, eight months after returning home to Dallas, Reep had to learn how to do his job as a restaurant management recruiter with his altered physical condition.

"I only have eight fingers and see out of one eye, and that affects the speed in which I process work," says Reep, 36, a father of two. "But at the end of the day, you're drawing a paycheck that supports your family, and that's a huge part of the healing."

More than 14,000 service members have been wounded in action in Iraq and Afghanistan. Major medical advances in the ability to treat soldiers on the battlefield mean more are surviving than in previous wars, but it also means men and women are coming home with life-altering injuries such as amputated limbs, blindness, paralyzed legs, serious burns and severe emotional trauma.

But far from being shunned, today's service members are finding themselves recruited by employers. Cisco Systems is attending job fairs at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington for wounded military members because of their technology skills. Northrop Grumman is reaching out to seriously disabled service members with a job fair at Walter Reed and offering information on how to complete a resume or handle an interview. "We're committed to helping those heroes who went off to war and paid a sacrifice for our country," says Sandra Evers-Manly, with Northrop.

Nine percent of all veterans have a disability sustained while in the service. For some, a life-altering injury is also career-altering.

Before going to Iraq in April of 2003 with the Army National Guard, Robert "B.J." Jackson, a father of two girls, worked doing home improvement, on roofing, siding and windows. Iraq seemed far removed from the lush cornfields of his native Des Moines.

In Iraq, he saw mud huts in the middle of the desert, days with temperatures of 130, and children so eager to see U.S. troops that they crowded the streets to shake his hand.

On his day off, he and four other soldiers went to downtown Baghdad to shop in the busy, congested city where lambs hung in the windows of butcher shops and trash smoldered in the streets. He stopped to buy his oldest daughter a doll, then jumped in his vehicle. When the Humvee pulled out, it hit a land mine. At the same time, a rocket-propelled grenade was launched at his truck.

The truck flew six feet in the air, pinning his legs under the dash. For more than four hours, others in his group were in a firefight while struggling to free him. The next thing he remembers is waking at Brook Army Medical Center in San Antonio. His wife told him his legs were gone.

His first thought: I'm still alive. Today, with a set of prosthetic legs, Jackson feels he can do almost anything. "But I haven't tried to get up on a roof again," he jokes.

Instead, Jackson, 24, is national spokesman for the Coalition to Salute America's Heroes (www.saluteheroes.org), which provides recently disabled veterans with job counseling, housing and spousal support. "This will help service members, and it helps me deal with my injuries."

Interest from Home Depot, Oracle and others is in contrast to the Vietnam era, when disabled veterans found many employers wary of hiring because of opposition to the war, says W. Roy Grizzard Jr., assistant secretary of Labor for the Office of Disability Employment Policy. The Americans with Disabilities Act also didn't exist in the post-Vietnam era. The 1990 law prohibits discrimination based on disability.

Veterans in general are an attractive talent pool because they often have technology and leadership skills, and sometimes have a federal security clearance, allowing them to take jobs for companies that work with classified or restricted information.

But there are challenges. Spouses might have to leave jobs to care for or be close to a service member during recovery, leaving both partners unemployed. Recovery and rehabilitation from a serious injury can take months or years. Employers might be willing to hire now, but injured veterans might not be physically or emotionally ready to begin work. By law, employers are generally required to offer jobs back to members of the Guard or Reserve who are injured in service and to make any necessary accommodations.

Disabled service members can also go back to school or try to forge new careers in a sometimes-bewildering civilian world.

Matthew Braiotta, 24, spent 10 months in Iraq with the Army, doing scouting patrols, weathering sweltering temperatures and living amid a seemingly endless terrain of sand. While on a patrol in Baghdad, he was riding in a Humvee that was showered with shrapnel from a roadside bomb.

Braiotta remembers looking out and feeling suddenly as if he'd been punched. Shrapnel flew into his eye, ear and legs. His eyes burned shut, and his goggles melted like candle wax to his skin. Everywhere, he felt heat. He kept telling anyone who would listen that his legs were on fire.

Today, he can't feel much of his right foot because of nerve damage and undergoes physical therapy. His eyes are fine. At first, he was unsure of what to do without the military. He says he felt "useless to the world, because all I know how to do is shoot a rifle and run around in the woods. That's not very marketable."

But through a Veterans Affairs program that hires disabled vets for information technology jobs, he is now working full time as a budget analyst and hoping to attend Georgetown University and perhaps to study law. He struggles to figure out how his military experience fits into the working and everyday world. Instead of giving orders, he says, he has to figure out how to persuade co-workers or others to do a job.

"I'd like to get into politics someday," Braiotta says. "But transitioning out of the military has been a nightmare. People look at you like you're just a college kid. No one has any idea the stuff I've done and seen. I've fought for your freedom."