(KCEN) -- An elite group of American heroes is set to embark on a pretty important challenge.
They've already sacrificed on the battlefield and later this month they'll climb Mount Kilimanjaro.
They're part of the Combat Wounded Veterans Challenge.
The team is now on their way to Africa and is expected to reach the summit on January 27th.
Now they're not doing it alone.
They have a team of prosthetic experts and researchers with them and the climbers say this is exactly what wounded veterans need.
According to former Army Sergeant Danny Swank, "They're just sitting around, moping around, wondering what they're going to do if they're even going to be able to do anything with the rest of their life, and it gives them something to work for and get out of bed for."
SSG Billy Costello says, "We were always a very active family, always swimming or biking or doing something, so I had to let my kids know that um, that stuff was still going to be there, that we could still do all those things."
Those prosthetics experts will be gathering information from that trip so they can create better fitting sockets for other wounded veterans.
