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Millboro native on leave from war in Iraq
BY GINA HAMILTON • CONTRIBUTING WRITER
 | | Former Millboro resident Army Spec. Gabriel Fuller is on leave from Fort Hood, Texas, and visiting family and friends in town with his wife, Michaela. He has recently completed his second deployment in Iraq. (Recorder photo by Gina Hamilton) |
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MILLBORO - He's wearing civilian clothes while on leave from Fort Hood, Texas, but Army Spec. Gabriel Fuller, 24, is very much an Army man. In fact, he signed up between his junior and senior year in high school and completed basic training in the reserves during his senior year before graduating from Smithfield High School in Smithfield, near Newport News.
He plans to make the Army his career. In June, he'll have completed seven years.
After two deployments to Iraq, the most recent a 15- month tour, he's happy to enjoy time with friends and family members in Virginia, including aunt Essie Heffler and her husband, Dean, in Millboro. He's also happy to show his wife, Michaela, more of the state and town he grew up in. A charming Texas native, Michaela first came to Virginia on their honeymoon almost two years ago. "My wife loves Virginia," he said. "She wanted to come back." The couple was introduced by mutual friends while Fuller was stationed at Ft. Hood.
Fuller said his first deployment to Iraq in 2004-05 was very different from the second. The troops had to push into Baghdad and deal with a lot of attacks on their camp; they conducted cordon searches, prisoner searches and "search and grab," going into houses and arresting suspicious residents. "At the same time, we had two colleges we were refurbishing, asking what they needed," he said. Fuller noted the military flew a couple of Iraqi professors to Texas A&M University and back so they could see a real university operation, and the Army bought them laboratory equipment.
In 2006-07, he said soldiers had greatly improved living conditions, including housing with beds in trailers instead of sleeping in tents, and as much food as they could want, complete with steak, shrimp and lobster every Friday. They had shower facilities, laundry service, a facility set up with TV X-boxes, gyms with weight rooms, Internet access for e-mails home, and phone cards at 3 cents a minute. "They stressed communication with family," he said, "and we had one of Sadam's palaces turned into a gym. They still stressed physical maintenance. We had to run 9 miles every week." The soldiers could also shop in Iraqi national shops or the PX (Post Exchange) for extra supplies; some facilities had a Pizza Hut and Popeye's Chicken.
On his second deployment, Fuller was on a personal security detail and ended up as bodyguard to Lt. Col. Jeffrey Vierra. "Most of his mission pertained to public relations," Fuller said, including finding ways to improve the Baghdad Zoo. He noted Vierra's job was to talk to the Iraqi people every day on what they could do to improve their economy, including how to draw more visitors to the zoo.
"They had about 100 people visiting a week and about 20 species," Fuller said. "When we left, it was over 200 people visiting a day and over 100 species, close to 500 animals. We had given them grants to improve the zoo and when we left, it was self-sustaining and making a profit."
The military also helped fund the Kark Club in the Kark District, a fitness and health facility for Iraqi children and youth. Fuller said it used to be the training ground for Sadam's national soccer team. A soccer player on the team was tortured by one of Sadam's sons and escaped to Britain. The sportsman returned recently and bought the facility. He hopes to eventually have a pool, build a gym for body builders, and a clinic for injured players. The U.S. military helped the project along by funding renovations to the gym. The military has also pooled medical resources in a joint task force with Iraqi doctors to provide free medical treatment for Iraqi people at locations in safe areas.
Military is welcome
Fuller recalled that during both deployments "we had people happy to have us there, crying, begging us not to leave too early," he said. Fuller said the more educated Iraqis understood how democracy works; the less educated still needed someone - a dictatorship - to tell them what to do. "So we worked a lot to educate people, focusing more on the younger generations and schools, to have a self-sustaining government and culture (in the future)," he said.
Reflecting on that time, Fuller said, "You miss your family so much, but we realized if we pulled out too early then everything we worked on would collapse on itself. People ask if it's as bad as (reported) on TV, but it's not. The media don't report the good stuff. It's 80 percent good and 20 percent bad."
He added, "It breaks my heart; the majority of TV pounds on the bad. Of the 15 provinces, in nine provinces the majority of control is now with the Iraqis. But they are brand new at the concept of democracy and need someone there to help them, and they don't have enough military for all the provinces. They are not at full military strength."
Fuller said the U.S. soldiers work with others deployed from countries including Australia, Estonia, Britain, Uganda who are doing the same thing, "but it's a piece the public is not seeing," he said.
Fuller spent two consecutive Christmases in Iraq. He said toward the second one, about August, "the Democrats started pushing hard to bring troops home and threatened to cut war funding. As a soldier, it infuriates you. They're playing with our lives. I was kind of scared that the politicians would use us as a tool to have Bush pull out the troops early."
He added, "But in December, we read they made a settlement - so they could go home for the break. We hate being over there, but we want to keep it out of our backyard. The politicians, they're so selfish, (making us feel) that we're expendable items."
A bright spot was the support from home.
"The support American people have shown has been phenomenal," Fuller said. "We get your letters, your care packages. That means a lot to us."
Shock of weather
The weather could be a real challenge. He recalled the hottest temperature of 148 degrees Fahrenheit during his 2004-05 stint, with the average in the high 120s, always a very dry heat and soldiers had to learn to stay well hydrated. "You're in full gear - the light load would be 40 to 45 pounds, more likely it'd be 60 pounds, and sometimes it seems unbearable," Fuller said. "We'd try to find shade and stay focused on what we were doing." In winter, it can be pouring rain constantly for months and mud everywhere. "But then, the 60s, 70s and 80s felt very chilly to us," he said, noting temperatures can drop into the 40s.
At times, soldiers get a break when entertainers arrive, including Kid Rock, Toby Keith and the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders when Fuller was in Iraq. The troops also get rest breaks that can range from three days at a palace in Baghdad or on the Qatar peninsula in the Gulf adjacent to Saudi Arabia, or two-week trips home.
Past and future
For Fuller, his current 30-day leave is a trip down memory lane in Millboro, where he was reared. He recalled his early schools days at the old Millboro school. "The cafeteria kept flooding out; we'd walk down the road to watch the new school being built," he said.
As a youngster, he experienced some tough times. His mother, Karen Fuller, died when he was one month old. His father, Art Fuller, died in a car accident just before the son was 16 years old, and his stepmother, Shirley Allen Fuller, succumbed to cancer three months later. At this time, the young man was living with his grandmother, Wally Pier, and attending high school in Smithfield.
"But me being a kid here in Bath County was one of the most wonderful things," Fuller said. "To have this gigantic, endless playground, going up into the mountains, into streams É"
Now he's focused on learning to speak German, because on May 10 he begins his next deployment for three years at the Army base in Hanau, Germany, near Frankfurt. Fuller and his wife are looking forward to sharing that new adventure together. Michaela said she lived with her parents, Kenneth and Wanda Montag, in Victoria, Texas, while her husband was in Iraq. Both said the support of their families, and their Pentecostal church, sustained them during the long separation.
Friends from Millboro who want to stay in touch with Fuller can e-mail him at gabrielfuller2000@yahoo.com
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