A group of doctors at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore are gearing up to offer military men injured in war the country’s first penis transplants. The surgeries could start within a year, and recipients could regain sensation, along with urinary and sexual function, within months, doctors said.

Though it’s unrealistic that they would regain all function, the hope of fathering a child “is a realistic goal,” Dr. W. P. Andrew Lee, the chairman of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Johns Hopkins, told The New York Times. The transplants would only involve the penis, not the testes, so any sired children would be genetically related to recipients.

The group of doctors felt compelled to offer the transplants because of the psychological toll of such injuries, particularly feelings of shame, stigma, and loss of identity. “I think one would agree it is as devastating as anything that our wounded warriors suffer, for a young man to come home in his early 20s with the pelvic area completely destroyed,” Lee said. Another doctor quoted by the Times said that in his experience young veterans would rather lose both legs and an arm than suffer a genital injury.

From 2001 to 2013, 1,367 men, nearly all under the age of 35, returned home from Iraq and Afghanistan with genital injuries, according to the Department of Defense Trauma registry, the Times noted.

Penis transplants have been performed twice before: an unsuccessful 2006 transplant in China, and a successful surgery in South Africa last year. The South African recipient, who suffered a botched circumcision, recently became a father.

Doctors at Johns Hopkins are optimistic that the surgeries in the US will be just as successful. Johns Hopkins has given the doctors permission to perform 60 transplants, and one candidate is far along in the evaluation process.

The transplant surgery is expected to take 12 hours and involves connecting two to six nerves, and six or seven veins and arteries. Nerves from the recipient will likely grow into the transplanted penis at a rate of about an inch a month. Doctors expect recipients will regain urinary function within weeks and sexual functions within a few months.

Johns Hopkins will cover the cost of the first transplant, estimated to be around $200,000 to $400,000. And doctors have asked the Defense Department for money to cover more.

So far, the doctors are only considering wounded veterans, not patients seeking gender reassignment. But that could change in time.