CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. -- The Marine Corps activated a battalion Wednesday assigned to assist wounded and ill Marines and sailors and their families on the West Coast.

The Wounded Warriors Battalion-West will be part of the Wounded Warrior Regiment, which is headquartered in Quantico, Va., and was established to help service members transition from care by the Defense Department to the Veterans Administration.

Members of the battalion will remain in contact with wounded veterans to make sure they're getting the care they need.

A ceremony marking the activation featured the 1st Marine Division band and comments from Sgt. Maj. Bradley Kasal, who was shot seven times and suffered 40 shrapnel wounds while trying to save a wounded Marine in a house in Fallujah, Iraq. Kasal received the Navy Cross, the Marine Corps' second-highest award for valor.

"You can break your body, but you can never break your spirit," Kasal told the assembled Marines.

The regiment is spending $53 million to build barracks at Camp Pendleton and Camp Lejeune, N.C., for recovering Marines. Wounded Warrior Battalion-East was established at Camp Lejeune on June 30.

"I think where we drop ... is when a Marine goes out on convalescent leave and he then has to go to the local medical facility for his treatment," Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway told a House Armed Services Committee panel March 1 in discussing the Wounded Warrior Battalion concept.

"There's not a Marine in the chain, and I don't know that he (the wounded service member) receives the priority that we would like to see him have."