Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, February 17, 1991                   TAG: 9102160356
SECTION: NATL/INTL                    PAGE: A-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: SAN DIEGO                                LENGTH: Medium

MARINE WHO SURVIVED FRIENDLY FIRE NOT BITTER

"You don't hear it or see it coming. It just happened," Tull said from the San Diego Naval Hospital.

Tull, 22, of Twentynine Palms, was the lone survivor among eight Marines in the scout vehicle, struck by a U.S. missile during a Jan. 30 battle against Iraqi forces pushing into the Saudi Arabian frontier town of Khafji.

Eleven Marines were killed in the Persian Gulf War's first major ground battle.

Tull had been in Saudi Arabia with his light armored infantry battalion nearly six months before the night of combat.

"It started like every other evening. The next thing we knew there was gunfire. You could see the tracer rounds.

"It looked just like Christmas. The only thing you could see were the lights. They were getting hit. You knew it was going on but you didn't have a chance to think or feel anything about it."

The fighting raged for hours. Then, he said, he felt a searing heat and a jolt of incredible force reverberating through the vehicle. He lost consciousness.

"When I woke up, I was outside my vehicle," Tull said. "It's probably better if I don't say what I saw. I still have my friends' families to think about.

"The minute I woke up on the battlefield, I wondered about that, you know, why I'm alive, and God's the only word I can tell you. There's no other explanation."

Tull suffered burns to his face and hands, a lung contusion and a fractured vertebrae that will require him to wear a support brace for about two months, said Navy Dr. Bill Pekarske.

Tull said he holds no resentment of the man who fired the missile.

"The pilot was doing his job," he said. "My friends that did not come back, they knew about friendly fire. We knew about combat, we'd never been in it, but we knew about it. None of us complained.

"They wouldn't be sore at the pilot, either, because they know what war's about. Unfortunately, friendly fire is just a part of it. That's all I can say."

Tull misses his buddies. He said they are heroes, not him.

He said he's ready to go home to his wife and their 1-year-old son, Coleman Garrett Tull, but Tull added: "I'd go over there again right now . . . but my wife doesn't want to hear that."