What is supported by more reliable evidence is that she participated in the Light Infantry operations in the Hudson River Valley and in Westchester County, areas that saw genuine combat activity in 1782.
Accounts place her first combat near Tarrytown, New York, in the summer of 1782. DeLancey’s Loyalist troops were a persistent presence in the Westchester County area, conducting raids and skirmishes that the Continental forces were tasked with suppressing. The Tarrytown engagement involved close fighting. She was hit.
The injury sustained at or near Tarrytown is the subject of some documentary disagreement. The account most supported by multiple sources describes a sword cut to the forehead and a musket ball wound to the thigh. A field physician treated the head wound. She left before the physician could examine the leg wound, understanding that an examination would reveal her sex.
She removed one musket ball herself, using a penknife and, by some accounts, a sewing needle, without anesthetic. The second ball was positioned too deep to reach. It remained in her leg for the rest of her life. The leg wound never fully healed.
This is among the best-documented aspects of her service, in the sense that multiple independent accounts corroborate the existence of a leg wound sustained during service and the self-treatment intended to preserve her disguise. The wound’s precise location, the number of balls, and the specific mechanics of treatment are more contested. The Museum of the American Revolution and the Mount Vernon digital encyclopedia offer somewhat different characterizations, and it is worth being direct: the sources disagree on specifics, and those disagreements cannot be resolved into a single authoritative account without additional primary evidence.