By RUSTY DENNEN

Owen McNamara, Tyler Gump and Jerry Magallanes share a bond that goes beyond the fact that they are Marines who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Each came back with injuries that changed his life. Now, the three friends are getting help through the Wounded Warrior Regiment at Quantico.

Founded in 2007, the regiment and its components worldwide have changed the way injured Marines and their families get non-medical care, with a more streamlined, one-stop system.

McNamara, a sergeant, and Gump and Magallanes, both staff sergeants, are outpatients at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. They carpooled to Quantico last week to a job fair sponsored by the regiment and Marine for Life, which helps Marines transition from the service.

McNamara, 24, who grew up near Boston, is typical of those who wind in the wounded warrior program.

He joined the Marines at 17. Six months later, he was in combat in Fallujah, Iraq. Wounded after the initial battle for the city and deployed again in 2005, he survived several bomb attacks on convoys. Next, he spent 21/2 years at The Basic School at Quantico.

By then, McNamara knew he was having problems.

"My family had noticed it. Friends from high school said: 'Hey, you've changed. You're not the person you were before.'"

GETTING HELP

In 2008 he was diagnosed with traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, and was referred to the Bethesda hospital for treatment.

"Some days are better than others," he said in an interview. He has wrestled with insomnia, drinking and trouble getting back to a normal life.

He expects to get out of the Marines within a year.

Until then, "I'm trying to get something lined up. I'd like to see myself stable in some sort of career, maybe federal employment," he said.

McNamara, who is engaged to be married and has a stepson and a 7-month-old daughter, spends weekdays in Bethesda and weekends at his Partlow home in Spotsylvania County.

The Bethesda hospital is one of 15 medical and trauma centers that fall under the Wounded Warrior Regiment's two battalions--East, headquartered at Camp Lejeune, N.C., and West, at Camp Pendleton, Calif.

McNamara met Gump and Magallanes at Bethesda.