Veteran who lost both legs in Iraq to speak in Minocqua

John Kriesel served in the Minnesota Army National Guard and during his second deployment to Iraq in 2006, his unit encountered a roadside bomb that exploded the vehicle he was in. Two of his close friends were killed and he lost his legs. 

Now, 17 years later, Kriesel uses that horrifying experience to help others live better lives. 

John Kriesel, shown here serving overseas during his time in the Minnesota Army National Guard, will speak in Minocqua on Tuesday, Sept. 19. The event’s proceeds benefit Generations.
(Contributed photograph)

A veteran turned motivational speaker, Kriesel is scheduled to speak at Reuland’s Conference Center in Minocqua on Sept. 19. The event will benefit Generations.

Raised just north of St. Paul in Minnesota, Kriesel joined the military on his 17th birthday. He’s now 41 years old, but said serving his country was always something he wanted to do. 

While in the Minnesota Army National Guard, he was part of the infantry, specializing in close quarters combat. Kriesel said he wanted to be fighting on the front lines after seeing news reports and video footage of the Gulf War on TV while growing up.

He served 10 years before medically retiring. Kriesel said he was offered to stay in the service after what had happened in Iraq, but he didn’t want to limit any opportunities for other soldiers.

Before his second deployment in Iraq, Kriesel was deployed to Kosovo in 2004. Kosovo is east of Italy and just north of Greece and Bulgaria. 

He said his contract was expiring after he returned from Kosovo near the end of 2004, and at that time, he said he heard about the next deployment to Iraq.

While he didn’t have to go to Iraq, he said “there was no way” he was going to stay stateside while his friends went there without him. So he re-enlisted and signed a waiver to go.

Dec. 2, 2006

Kriesel said Iraq was getting “kind of out of control” in late 2006, early 2007, and because of that, his deployment was extended when former President George W. Bush sent more troops over.

It was tough for everyone, Kriesel said, noting that his injury occurred on Dec. 2, 2006. 

“We had just returned from a foot patrol in the morning to go watch an intersection that the insurgents would bury bombs in frequently, and so we wanted to catch who was doing it and eliminate them,” he said. “So we sat there, they never showed up. We were spotted by a goat farmer so we had to leave our spot just in case. We didn’t want them to tell the insurgents where we were because we could get ambushed then.”

Kriesel said he and his unit returned to their base and the day proceeded. He described the morning as being “very chill.” They ate breakfast and watched cartoons on TV, he said. While they were taking a nap, Kriesel said their lieutenant was on the roof watching for suspicious activity and woke them up after he spotted something.

“He said he needed five volunteers to ride in the up-armored humvee to go and check it out,” Kriesel said. “So five of us raised our hand and said we would go, and then with us was a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, which is a 32-ton armored personnel carrier.”

The Bradley carried a three-man crew, Kriesel said, and his five-man crew followed behind in the humvee. 

After checking out the “suspicious activity,” it ended up being nothing. 

“But then we learned that our headquarters … spotted somebody digging in the road … about three miles from our location,” he continued. “And we knew that they were up to no good.”

While rounding the last turn near the location, Kriesel said he remembers hearing a metallic “plink.”

“Like if you threw a big rock into a steel drum, like an empty steel drum where it like echoed … and I don’t remember flying through the air, I don’t remember landing on the ground,” he said. “But I remember waking up on the ground, I had yet to open my eyes, but I had rocks hitting the ground, rocks hitting metal. It sounded like a large hail storm.”

Hearing yells from his friends, Kriesel said he was aware of what had happened at that moment. 

“It just was so real,” he said. “Even when you don’t want it to be real, (the screaming) just made it seem to be more real.”

He said he felt himself in a “twisted” and “contorted” position, but there was no pain “at that point” and he didn’t know how bad his injuries were.

Kriesel said the first thing he noticed was two broken bones in his left forearm. It was kind of hanging down, but he said he picked it up against his chest hoping it wouldn’t result in any nerve damage.

“And I was saying that out loud, I was like, ‘Man I hope I don’t have any nerve damage to this,’” he said. “And then I looked down and I saw that my left leg above the knee was connected by maybe a piece of skin, but my pant leg is probably what was holding it together.”

Kriesel said he noticed his femur was broken while he laid there in the rubble and aftermath of the explosion. 

The compound fractures of his body were “very weird” for him to see, he said, noting he remembers taking notice of how clear and clean the white of his bone was in the daylight.

Kriesel said he knew instantly his left leg was beyond saving. He said his right leg below the knee was bleeding heavily and looked like he had just “stuck it in a wood chipper.”

“So I was pretty sure that that was where my life was going to end,” Kriesel said. “I’ll never forget sitting there and thinking ‘This is it, at the age of 25, I’m going to die here.’ But the guys in the vehicle ahead of us just missed the bomb.”

The bomb, Kriesel explained, was made up of 200 pounds of homemade explosives packed into two propane tanks. 

The left tire of their vehicle drove over a pressure plate that set it off as they rounded that last corner, he said. 

When the bomb went off, the blast was so powerful that Kriesel said the unit about a 100 yards ahead thought they were the ones who hit the explosive. 

After realizing they didn’t set off the bomb, they turned around and rushed to the aid of Kriesel and the others, he said. 

Kriesel said the first person to come to his side was a friend of his from Plummer, Minn. He’s bluntly honest, Kriesel noted, and told him that his legs were in “really bad” shape. The friend, he said, did assure him though that Kriesel would be fine and they were going to get him out of there.

Kriesel said another friend from Minnesota came up to him next and began working on his left leg.

“He’s kind of the opposite,” he said. “He looked at me and said ‘Hey buddy, you look great, you look great. Everything’s gonna be fine. You’re gonna be home soon, you’re gonna see your family. You look amazing.’ He was like smiling, trying to keep me calm. So in hindsight it’s very funny, just because he’s a goofball. He was kind of just trying to cheer me up and keep me calm because, obviously, the situation was bad.”

After moving Kriesel away from the exploded vehicle, he said his friends had to move the vehicle off of another person trapped beneath it.

When he was moved he realized his pelvis was broken too.

A Marine who was also involved in the blast stayed near Kriesel while others were being helped. The Marine, he said, suffered a concussion, but worked to keep Kriesel talking and not letting fall asleep.

“He kept asking me the same three questions, which was frustrating me because I’m just like ‘Leave me alone, shut up’ … but he did his job keeping me awake and alert,” Kriesel said, adding that he grabbed his friend who initially responded to him and told him to tell his family he loved them.

Kriesel said he felt himself starting to get cold. 

“I was pretty sure I was dying right then,” he said. “And so I grabbed him, I said, ‘Tell my family I love them,’ and he looked at me and told me ‘Shut up, you’re gonna tell them yourself.’”

Those words gave Kriesel hope and motivated him to survive.

Kriesel said it was hard to keep his eyes open and noted that he’d fell asleep a couple times while waiting for a helicopter to come to his rescue. His friends would continue to slap him and tell him he needed to stay awake.

When the helicopter arrived and Kriesel was loaded, he said he remembers the flight nurse asking him for his social security number. 

“I was so tired I couldn’t even get the first number of it out,” he said. “And that’s the last thing I remember until I woke up eight days later at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C.”

There was an eight-day stretch from the time Kriesel was transported from Iraq and to the hospital in Washington D.C. 

During that time he flat-lined three separate times and needed to be shocked back to life each time. After he was stabilized at a field hospital in Iraq, he was transported to Balad Air Base north of Baghdad. From there, he was transported to a military medical center in Landstuhl, Germany. 

“In Landstuhl was where my situation deteriorated and my family was flown over basically to say goodbye,” Kriesel explained. “But I pulled through there, I missed three flights back because I wasn’t stable and that fourth one I made. And like I said, I woke up eight days later at Walter Reed in Washington D.C.”

‘Everything was so raw’

It doesn’t seem to bother Kriesel to talk about his deployment in Iraq. He recounts the story in great detail and made a joke or two while telling it. 

He credits his ability to talk about it so freely now to how the medical staff tended to him at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington D.C.

The first thing he said he did when he woke up from an eight-day medically-induced coma was ask about his friends who were in the vehicle explosion with him.

He learned one of his friends was OK and stayed in Iraq to continue the deployment. He said he was told two of his other friends had died.

While he desperately wanted it all to be just a dream he could wake up from, Kriesel said he knew couldn’t do that because it was indeed real.

“And that for me was, what crushed me, and I didn’t want to talk about it,” he said. “But there was a doctor there, right off the bat, that made me talk about it; for a number of reasons. They wanted to know how bad my brain injury was, but also just to start talking about it. And I didn’t want, but he said ‘Just take your time.’”

Kriesel said at first he was only able to get through a couple of sentences of what happened before not being able to continue, “because it was so raw.” 

At the time, he could still smell the bomb blast because of residue he still had on his skin.

“At that point, everything was so raw and fresh and real that it was tough to talk about,” Kriesel said. “But (the doctor) would say take your time. I’d get through a couple sentences and couldn’t go any further and then he’d say ‘OK, just take a minute, no problem.’ Then I go a little further and a little further.”

After multiple attempts to recite what he’d seen and what had happened during the blast, Kriesel said he slowly became open about it.

Family, friends and news stations all played a role, as well as medical staff, in helping Kriesel talk about his experience. 

He said his story was real, but seemed unbelievable. And from talking with so many people, he learned how the power of his story could help not only other veterans, but everyday people as well.

“You realize that if you talk about it, it’s gonna help you heal,” Kriesel said. “And on top of that, civilians who have no idea what it’s like to be in combat, it can help them gain a perspective on overcoming adversity.”

A new chapter

After recovering from his injuries and reacclimating  into the everyday life of America, Kriesel said one big thing which helped him regain confidence was when he successfully campaigned for the Minnesota Legislature. 

He served one two-year term before deciding he wouldn’t seek re-election.

Now, Kriesel travels around giving public presentations about his experiences in the Minnesota Army National Guard and both of his deployments. 

“But the message, how I relate it to any group — it could be first responders, it could be people that are in the military, it could be business owners, it could be executives — I relate what happened to me to everyone. And just basically explain how they’re not gonna lose their legs in a 200-pound bomb blast, they’re just not,” he said. “But we all go through adversity in our lives. That’s one of the few guarantees in our life is adversity. And it really doesn’t matter what type of adversity we faced or how big or how small that adversity seems, it’s all about the attitude that we bring to the table. And that’s what helps us overcome that adversity in anything in life.”

Doors will open at 6 p.m. and the presentation will begin at 6:30. A $75 ticket donation is required. RSVP by calling 715-356-9118.

Trevor Greene may be reached via email at [email protected].