In a few months, a young soldier is going to have an operation that is going to be performed for the first time in the United States: a penis transplant. He will be operated due to a horrific injury that he received from a bomb blast in Afghanistan.

The organ transplant will be done from a deceased and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore’ surgeons said that they expect it to begin functioning in a matter of months. They expect that it will develop urinary function, sensation and, ultimately could give the received the ability to have sex.

According to the Department of Defense Trauma Registry, 1,367 men in military service sustained injuries to the genitals in Iraq or Afghanistan, from 2001 to 2013. Roughly all of them were below 35 years old and got injured by homemade bombs, generally known as improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. At times soldiers lose all or part of their penises or testicles, which is called as genitourinary injuries by doctors.

Wars often bring along missing limbs, but the genital damage is something that soldiers generally hide.

Dr. WP Andrew Lee, chairman of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Johns Hopkins said that such genitourinary injuries are the things that are not heard usually. Dr. WP Andrew added, “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”.