THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 26, 1996 TAG: 9605250165
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SERIES: On Memorial Day: Remembering fallen heroes
SOURCE: Janie Bryant
LENGTH: 61 lines
Hello Mom from somewhere in Saudi Arabia.
I'm sorry for the delay in writing but things are very busy and stressful here. Tension is high but I'm enjoying this experience. It builds character against other things. Anyway we have been here since Sun. the 6th and we have moved twice already for security reasons (terrorist threats).
. . .
Now we are just waiting on our equipment to arrive at the Docks and we will roll out to the Desert. . . . We don't have much ammunition. . . .
- Spec4 George Spruill
That letter was written in January 1991, as George ``Tony'' Spruill and other soldiers waited and prepared themselves for battle in the Persian Gulf War.
Five years later, Spruill has not forgotten how he felt, and it has changed the way he looks at Memorial Day.
``Where we were kind of fortunate. . . . You look back at other conflicts like Vietnam,'' he says. ``So many people in the same position I was in really did lose their lives. . . .
``It makes you really think about it, and it's sad. It causes you to take a serious look at war and at life.''
Spruill, a Wilson High School graduate, had joined the Army in 1988 in the hope of one day studying to be a civil engineer. Today, he is a Portsmouth firefighter and attends Tidewater Community College part time.
But the time he spent in Saudi Arabia changed his life.
``It really makes you count your blessings,'' he said. ``It causes you to grow up, being involved in a situation where you're faced with life or death.''
Spruill was 21 then and ``still kind of young at heart,'' he remembers.
But faced with his mortality, he began to think about the possibility of dying without ever having children. Not long after the war, he married a woman, also in the Army, and they had a child.
Although he is divorced now, Spruill says his 4-year-old daughter, Destinee, was definitely a result of the way war made him think about where his life was headed and the need to have children.
By the time his unit was finally deployed to the front line, his comrades started digging in and putting their gear into foxholes, he says. It was around the time the Scud missiles were being used - and every night, he remembers, it was like fireworks in the sky.
They never did have to go through battle, but he saw the results of modern warfare after the war ended. Spruill saw the enemy's massive casualties, left in the desert.
Although those images will never leave him, Spruill says that being in the military during the Persian Gulf War also affected him in a positive way.
``It gave me a positive outlook once it was all over. You feel like you can go through a lot tougher things - or things you thought were tougher.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by MARK MITCHELL
Today George Spruill is a Portsmouth firefighter who thinks
seriously about life.
Spruill served with the Army in Saudi Arabia during Desert Storm. by CNB