Navbar back button disappearing with Material CSS

I initially set up our web app for iOS — things work great.
When I use the material style sheets and material app init, the soft back button in the navbar is disappearing from the DOM. What can I do to keep it there? A back arrow seems like common behavior for android apps.

The back link below doesn’t persist when I click through — it seems to be forcefully removed from the .navbar

DASH Portions
  <a href="#" class="back link">
    <i class="icon icon-back"></i>
    <span class="">Back</span>
   </a>