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A train station is where passengers begin a journey, or change direction. For the past year, Freedom Station has been a place where San Diego sailors and Marines with broken bodies start their journey to a new life.

It looks much like many apartment complexes in old San Diego neighborhoods. A handful of cottages circle a courtyard.

But every detail is ready to pass a drill instructors inspection. The grass is military-style neat. There is a white picket fence in front of each door.

And the residents, most in their 20s, arent ordinary. Josue Barron is missing a leg above the knee, and one eye is glass and bears the emblem of his infantry unit 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines. Timothy Read also lost part of a leg, and one wrist bears scars where doctors stitched it back on after a roadside bomb blast.

Barron likes to sit on the small porch of his cottage in the afternoons. Other residents call out greetings as they come home from their doctors appointments.

Being combat wounded, with all these guys here, I felt comfortable. If I was living in any other neighborhood, I wouldnt be able to talk to my neighbors because they have nothing in common with me, said Barron, 22, who lives with his wife and their dog in the small house while waiting for his medical discharge.

Here, we all are transitioning, and we all have our own demons, said David Smith, 23, an injured Marine veteran who was one of Freedom Stations first residents. But were all doing it together, so its easier.

Operated by a grass roots San Diego nonprofit group, Freedom Station officially opened one year ago, on Memorial Day weekend.

Since that time, the quiet complex has been home to 15 injured service members, who were once resident patients at San Diego Naval Medical Center in Balboa Park. An additional 23 are on a waiting list.

Sandy Lehmkuhler was volunteering at the Navy hospital, one of the militarys national centers for amputee care, when she got the idea.

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Next stop for wounded vets: Freedom Station