Wounded Warrior Project with Jason Braase.

January 21, 2013

Wounded Warrior Project with Jason Braase.

Jason Braase

After you go through something as traumatic as Jason Braase did, you start a whole new life. He recalls coming back from Iraq with nothing – no clothes, no wallet, not even a toothbrush.
“That’s when Wounded Warrior Project^®(WWP) first came into my life in the form of a backpack. It had toiletries, underwear, and clothes. I wore out everything in it and rocked that backpack on my wheelchair with pride. Their support is directly improving lives. I want to be there for warriors just like they have been there for me.”
Jason understands the needs of the next generation of returning warriors who follow his footsteps and the journey he began in 2001. Just hours before his high school graduation, Jason Braase met with an Army National Guard recruiter.
“After 9/11 happened, I still had the opportunity to back out. In fact, a lot of people were pressuring me to do so. But I had several friends who volunteered because they wanted to protect this country. That gave me tremendous inspiration.”
Every day through basic training Jason was told: “You’re going to war ... you’re going to war.”
But the call never came. He went home to his unit, drilling with Bravo Company. And he heard the same thing every six months for three years: “You’re going to war.”
But they didn’t. Jason called it, “a horrible, horrible limbo.” He bounced around jobs – mowing lawns, working in a restaurant, selling gym memberships – during that three-year span.
Then came a letter stuck to his door. It proclaimed “Raging Bull Alert,” which was the code that their Army National Guard unit was headed to Iraq.

"That’s when Wounded Warrior Project^®(WWP) first came into my life in the form of a backpack. It had toiletries, underwear, and clothes. I wore out everything in it and rocked that backpack on my wheelchair with pride. Their support is directly improving lives. I want to be there for warriors just like they have been there for me."

-Jason Braase

“That was a pivotal time for Iraq – because they were holding their first elections. Our tanker unit collected, guarded, and transported ballots. The terrorists did not want those ballots getting through, and they hit us pretty hard. But we got them all through. Being a tanker, when you’re up there, you feel invincible.”
But on June 26, 2005, Jason ultimately found out he was all too human.
“I was escorting explosive ordnance disposal early one morning,” Jason recalls. “I stepped out of the vehicle and started walking away when an improvised explosive device (IED) detonated. My Hummer took the majority of the blast, but one piece of shrapnel blew through my right leg just below the knee.”
Jason lost a full body supply of blood within 12 hours. The shrapnel shattered the top of his tibia, severed his MCL and ACL, and caused major nerve damage.
Jason says it took blood donations from more than 50 Americans to replace the blood he lost.
“The doctors replaced the damaged arteries and pieced together what was left of my tibia back into my knee joint. Plastic surgeons cut half of my calf muscle to cover the wound with soft tissue before performing a skin graft to seal the injury.”
His recovery took Jason on a seven-year journey that included 13 surgeries.
Before each surgery, there was always doubt as to the outcome. “You may lose your leg,” doctors told him prior to one procedure. But he didn’t. “You may never walk again,” he was later told. But he did. “You’ll never be able to straighten your leg,” he was once warned.
Today, Jason enjoys 95 percent mobility with the leg they said would never straighten. And he thinks about that with each step as he counsels other warriors as a WWP peer mentor.
“The support I got from everyone – my wife, my family, the hospital workers, other warriors – brought me from the brink of suicide to almost complete recovery. I want to help other warriors achieve their own healing in their own way.”

Back