The Ghost Turd Stories Podcast

INTRODUCTION: Hello everyone and welcome to Ghost Turd Stories.

I'm your host, Troy Gent.

Ghost Turd Stories’ mission is using humorous and challenging stories from veterans and first responders to reduce the burden of families whose veteran or first responder took their own life.

Ghost Turd Stories’ vision is to use humorous and challenging stories to prevent suicide within our ranks and reduce the burden of families whose veteran or first responder took their own life.

We hope to attract veterans and first responders, as well as those interested in knowing more about what it's like to be in our shoes while we wear or wore those shoes.

LET US WRITE YOUR STORY! COMMERCIAL: At Ghost Turd Stories, we tell and write the stories of veterans and first responders for their families and friends.

We love storytelling and believe there is nothing more inspiring and nothing that gets people to take action like a great story.

Families and friends want to know the sacrifices we made, the services we rendered, and the people we lifted so they can be inspired and learn about the legacy we left.

Our podcast is the face of our company but we want every family who cares to know about the experiences their veteran and or first responder went through for them.

We interview veterans and first responders, collect pictures, write their stories, and compile them in a book for their families and friends to enjoy.

Oftentimes it's difficult for us to talk to our loved ones about what we did, saw, and heard while serving.

At Ghost Turd Stories, we bridge the gap.

For pricing, visit linktr.ee/ghostturdstories and click on the second tab directly under the podcast link called "Let Us Write Your Story!"

That's linktr.ee/ghostturdstories.

REBECCA GENT: Welcome to The Ghost Turd Stories Podcast.

This is Rebecca Gent, the podcast editor and publisher and Troy's daughter.

I'm excited to have him here tonight so that I can ask him more in-depth questions about his story because I grew up with these stories and you will soon get to hear more of them as the podcast goes on and as he releases his books and his newsletter.

So how are you doing tonight?

TROY GENT: I'm doing fantastic.

This is interesting being on the other end of this so it's going to be fun.

REBECCA GENT: Yeah and I was going to say it's kind of a fun time to be doing this podcast because I'll be heading to bed right after this and you used to tell us bedtime stories and this is kind of where it all started.

TROY GENT: So you're going to get a bedtime story tonight?

REBECCA GENT: Oh, yeah.

A few.

A few.

Initially, I wanted to start with why you decided to go into the Marine Corps.

TROY GENT: Okay, so when I was a junior in high school, I became pretty popular.

I was bullied a lot growing up and my freshman year I was bullied and I moved away from Beaver, Utah to Saint George, Utah to live with my mom because I needed to get out of Beaver.

I just felt out of place.

I was bullied and I just hated it.

When I left to Saint George, Utah, I really came out of my shell and I got into some trouble but it was worth it because I also became, I wouldn't say fearless, I was still paranoid a lot about getting in trouble, but I was also intentionally doing crazy stuff so I could get noticed and get in trouble.

Anyway, I came out of my shell and my dad convinced me to move back to Beaver for my junior year in high school and I went from being bullied and a loser as a freshman in Beaver to being the most popular kid within a few weeks in the whole high school the start of my junior year.

I had a pretty good football season my junior year for the Beaver High School football team and then I just had these big high hopes that my senior year was going to be this amazing year and I was going to be able to pick a college and go play football at a college.

But in practice before the first game, my senior year, I was a wide receiver and I went and did a passing route and I jumped in the air to catch the football and one of the defensive backs on my team stuck his helmet in the middle of my back when he tackled me.

So he hit me really hard and where his helmet was placed caused my neck to whiplash backward really hard.

And I didn't know it for sixteen years, but I fractured three vertebrae in my back when I got hit by that kid.

I sat out for three games and then the next couple games played on special teams, but that basically ruined my chance of getting a scholarship to play football.

When I realized that I had lost that chance or those hopes, I started looking around for ideas because I didn't know what I was going to do.

"I was going to go play college football and then now I'm not going to play college football so what the heck am I supposed to do with my life now after high school?"

And so I had a friend who said, "Hey, I've got these Marine recruiters that are going to come to my house and talk to me about joining the Marine Corps."

And I said, "Marines, huh?"

I'd heard of them, but I was…

I kind of knew a little bit about the Marines.

I didn't really know the difference between Marines and soldiers.

REBECCA GENT: Were they coming to your house almost like Mormon missionaries?

TROY GENT: Well, they went to my friend's house.

Yeah.

So they were recruiting.

So they're trying to sell something.

Yeah, like a Mormon missionary, except they drop F-bombs.

REBECCA GENT: In the recruiting meeting?

TROY GENT: I can't remember if they did in that recruiting meeting.

I'm just comparing missionaries to Marines.

They were definitely trying to recruit us but they didn't approach it necessarily like Mormon missionaries.
We went to the house, me and another buddy.

So there were three of us there, the host, and then me and Josh so three best friends, and from the first meeting I was sold.

I was like, "I'm going to the Marine Corps."

I just…

I knew.

Marines and soldiers and all the services, they've got their own recruiting videos and I think they might have shown us a recruiting video that night.

And I thought, "I'm gonna come out of the water with a machine gun and look so cool doing it!"
So that was like this dumb eighteen year old kid.

I did, at one point, come out of the water of the swamps of Okinawa with a machine gun, but it sucked.

It was not fun.

So the recruiting videos did their job and then of course the recruiters talked it up like, “Marines are the best and everybody wants to be a Marine but hardly anybody gets to be a Marine.”

And so I was like, "Oh, I can do that."

At this point, my broken back, I didn't know it like I said for sixteen years, it was still bothering me but I didn't know I had a broken back.

If I had told the Marine Corps I had a broken back, there's no way I would have gotten in the Marine Corps.

REBECCA GENT: Did you ever compare with the other branches during that time?

TROY GENT: Yeah.

REBECCA GENT: You did?

I wouldn't think you would.

TROY GENT: Here's what happened.

It was really funny.

At the time, Sergeant Flack was my recruiter and I think he became a master sergeant or a master gunnery sergeant before he retired.

He was all confidence.

Like, “I want you to be a Marine but if you don't become a Marine then so what?

Your loss."

At some point during my senior year, it might've been a few months after the Marine recruiter meeting or something, I met with two Army recruiters in the school library.

I don't remember what prompted me to sit down with them.

It might've been my dad saying, "Maybe you should look around a little bit or whatever.

Ask the army.

See if it's better."

That might've been it.

And so I sat down with two army recruiters in the school library and they were so uptight and so butthurt that I was resisting going into the Army that it just solidified my decision to go in the Marine Corps.

I don't want to be recruited by a bunch of pansies that are acting like babies.

REBECCA GENT: Yeah.

Yeah, reputation.

Right?

TROY GENT: Yeah.

And that had nothing to do with the army and everything to do with recruiters and how they were trying to sell me.

REBECCA GENT: I think mom told me once that your recruiter was actually at your wedding.

TROY GENT: Yeah he was.

He came to my wedding and I think he had moved to recruiting duty up north, and so he came all the way down from Salt Lake to come to my wedding.

It was cool.

REBECCA GENT: What were your initial thoughts going into boot camp.

Getting off the bus, what was going through your head?

TORY GENT: They call it MEPS, Military Entry something something…

I forget what it stands for.

But they have a MEPS in every major city around the country and so I went to MEPS in Salt Lake City.

So you do it once or twice for evaluations before you go and then the day before you go to boot camp, in my case anyway, they put you through MEPS again and then they put you in a hotel that night.

Well, actually we got put in a hotel and then the next morning we went to MEPS and then they processed us and swore us in after we were all clear.

All I packed to MEPS was a razor and a little bit of shaving cream so that could shave the morning of MEPS and then my flight to San Diego, my ID card, and my Book of Mormon and that's it.

I threw my razor away and whatever shaving cream was left I threw that away because I didn't want anything going with me except my ID and my scriptures and that was it.

I remember being super intimidated.

I didn't sleep one wink that night before boot camp and they keep you up the first night all night when you get to boot camp and so I literally didn't sleep one wink for I guess it'd be about sixty hours.

I was too scared.

I was so intimidated that night before the morning of MEPs and then flying to boot camp.

It was interesting though because I got to boot camp…

I got to the airport in San Diego, we went to the USO to sit there and wait, and then a drill instructor called our names off our packets and said, "Get to get to the bus!"

And as soon as it started, it was like, "I'm ready for this."

Like I wasn't scared anymore.

All the fear just left.

It was so weird.

It was like a noticeable disappearance of all fear and I was just motivated.

I remember the first time I got yelled at.

I was on the yellow footprints and they told us to put everything in our hand by our foot.

And I don't know why I did this, but I put it down and stuck my heel on it and so I was the only recruit standing there at the position of attention with my right knee bent because my heel was up on my Book of Mormon.

I looked like an idiot.

So he comes and is like, "What are you?!

Some stupid idiot?!"

I was like, "Oh, I didn't know!"

And then he's like, "Take it out from under your foot and put it on the side, you moron!"

I just said, "Aye, sir!"

REBECCA GENT: You've talked a lot about…

Well, you've talked about a lot of people and told us about a lot of people with like outrageous personalities and like outrageous things they've done.

But boot camp specifically, who was the the most outrageous person you met and why?

TROY GENT: I remember some outrageous stuff happening, a lot of it, but there was a recruit that whined a lot and complained about everything and one night we all went to bed and the senior drill instructor decided that he was going to punish this kid.

And this was probably borderline hazing, according to the current Marine Corps standards at the time.
It probably would've been classified as hazing.

But the senior drill instructor was so pissed off at this guy because he complained all the time about everything that he didn't care.

And so we all went to bed and the lights went off and then he made this kid with a wet towel...

Basically, it's a bear crawl but it was a push.

So he was pushing the wet towel that was spread out over the floor.

He was pushing it up and down the squad bay in a bear crawl position and that it burns your hamstrings up like crazy.

Right?

It just fries your hamstrings and your butt.

The whole time he was like, "AHHHHHHH!"

The senior drill instructor was like, "Shut up!

Shut up!"

Just kept screaming at him, "You better push!"
And he's like, "AHHHHH!!!"

He was just crying the whole time.

And so we're all supposed to be sleeping.

Right?

But all you can hear is, "AHHHHHHH!!!"

There was this other kid.

He refused to take a shower.

The drill instructors weren't supposed to lay hands on any of us.

They could get a millimeter away with their hands and their face and scream at us and threaten us but they weren't allowed to actually touch us.

Unless you, without permission, got to within an arm's distance, then they basically would stiff arm you to say, "Get the hell away from me."

So this kid refused to take a shower.

The drill instructors would scream at him and threaten him and he just wouldn't take a shower and this kid stunk so bad.

He just didn't want to be naked with the rest of us.

Right?

So the drill instructors got sick of it and they pulled the squad leaders and the guide in.

They said, "Listen.

He will not take a shower.

He stinks."

They said, "Take care of it."

And so they said, "Aye, aye, sir!"

And that night, they took this kid, about four or five of them.

He was kicking and screaming the whole way.

They carried him into the shower, ripped his clothes off, they turned the shower on, they scrubbed him down with soap, and he never had a problem taking a shower after that.

REBECCA GENT: In your book, I was reading that your group was one of the first to go through the crucible.

TROY GENT: So the crucible was considered a new thing they added to boot camp and going to be considered the pinnacle of your transformation from civilian to Marine.

It was basically two and a half days filled with obstacles.

So we got a couple hours of sleep on both nights and then we got two meals total for two and a half days and it was filled with just physically exerting obstacle courses.

So you basically had to work as a team to solve the problem, solve the obstacles and it was in fireman team, so teams of four.

And then at the end, you climb these two really big hills and at the top they give you your Eagle, Globe, and Anchor.

And so when a Marine gets his Eagle globe and anchor from his drill instructors, he's considered or she's considered a Marine.

We were made fun of because we were the first Marines to get to the fleet that had gone through the crucible.

So our superiors, our team leaders and squad leaders, hadn't gone to the crucible and they were about anywhere from a year and a half to two years ahead of us as far as seniority goes.

So we were pretty much the new recruits that had done the crucible.

And so they would say, "Oh, you were up on the crucible hill crying."

It's kind of hard not to cry when you go through that and then up on top of the hill they're playing...
What's the song?

I'm gonna messs this up because I'm not a very good hummer.

I'm gonna hum this.

"I'm proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free."

That's what it is.

They played that song and you're a Marine now.

Right?

And so you're like, "I don't want to cry in front of my drill instructor."

So you're trying to hold it back but at the same time, I wasn't the only one that had a tear come down his cheek.

REBECCA GENT: Yeah.

TROY GENT: They were like, "You guys are crucible Marines.

Oh, you were up there crying because you got your Eagle, Globe, and Anchor."

So I don't know.

I took it well, I think, and just said, "Okay.

Alright, Corporal.

Aye, aye."

REBECCA GENT: Were you crying because you were emotional with the song?

Like you felt the song?

TROY GENT: Yeah, like, “I’m a Marine now, I'm an American, and I did this.”

You know?

So, yeah.

It was emotional.

REBECCA GENT: No, I think that's completely justifiable.

What were your thoughts upon graduating?

What was graduating like and what kinds of things did you do?

TROY GENT: We marched to our families.

We got to mingle with our families for about an hour to an hour and a half, maybe two.

Dad didn't come down but mom came down with John, her boyfriend.

And just so everybody knows, John is one reason that I started this company.

John was like a second father to me.

He drove a gun boat or a landing craft in the Korean war on the beaches of North Korea and he saw lots and lots of combat.

I just really admired the guy and he really was proud of me.

And so he drove mom down to the graduation, but he would commit suicide in 2005.

REBECCA GENT: How long was your mom and John together?

TROY GENT: So they were together off and on for years since mom divorced dad.

She met John maybe even before the divorce was final.

They were just friends maybe at the time or whatever but mom and dad divorced in 1998, I believe.

And so between 1998 and 2005 when John took his life, they were together off and on quite a bit.

I think mom and John weren't officially boyfriend and girlfriend.

They were in an off season when he took his own life.

I think it deeply impacted mom, but they weren't together at the time that he did it.

I don't believe.

REBECCA GENT: What was your mom's reaction to you graduating?

Like how did she act?

TROY GENT: So...

That's a funny story.

I wonder if I should tell that one.

Any good mom is going to be nervous that their child joins the military and there's this stigma around Marines that they're first in the fight.

I was joining the Marines and the infantry and mom just had these ideas that, "Oh my gosh.

My son is joining the Marine Corps infantry.

I don't know if I like that or not."

And mom is a paranoid person by nature anyway.

When Saddam Hussein was playing around with us in the no-fly zones in 1998, we started a pretty big bombing campaign and so our unit actually was told to pack and get ready to go because they thought we might be going over to Kuwait.

And so we packed and at some point, I called mom just to say hi.

Back then I was calling from a landline.

We didn't have cell phones and stuff so she didn't really know who was calling.

I said, "Hey, mom.

How's it going?"

And the first thing she said was, "Where are you?"

I wanted to play with her and so I said, "I'm in Iraq."

And she just…

She lost her mind.

She went completely internal just being so worried about me.

And so I let it go for a few seconds.

And I said, "I'm just kidding, mom."

And she says, "You son of a bitch."

So I said, "You realize what you just called yourself.

Right?"

REBECCA GENT: Yeah.

TROY GENT: So that's been a funny joke ever since.

REBECCA GENT: Have you brought it up?

TROY GENT: I might have once or twice.

I've got to bring it up again next time I talked to her.

REBECCA GENT: Do you think she would remember?

TROY GENT: I don't know.

REBECCA GENT: She remembers Emma's snakes.

TROY GENT: Yeah.

"Don't bring your snakes!"

Like, "Who brings their snakes on vacation with them."

REBECCA GENT: Yeah.

TROY GENT: Maybe someone out there does.

I don't know.

REBECCA GENT: Yeah.

But she didn't react super strongly at graduation?

TROY GENT: Oh, sorry.

Yeah.

Let's go back to graduation.

REBECCA GENT: No worries.

TROY GENT: That night when we marched as a platoon to our families, she was super excited to see me.
So was John.

We had a good hour, hour and a half together.

And then the next day we got about six hours with them to walk around base.

The next day we graduated but I don't remember any sort of specific emotions she might've had.
I don't remember if she cried or nothing.

I know she was really proud.

REBECCA GENT: What was the transition like after graduation into whatever was next?

What was your next role or what sort of training did you do after that?

I'm assuming it was infantry school.

Right?

But how much time did you have in between?

TROY GENT: I rode back to Utah from San Diego in the back of John's van and I got ten days of leave.

So I spent about half of that in St. George and then half of that in Beaver where dad lived.

Beaver was where most of my friends were.

I spent some time just goofing off with my friends in Beaver.

I had to get on another flight.

I think it was from Salt Lake and flew down to San Diego again and then they bussed us up to Camp Pendleton for the School of Infantry.

REBECCA GENT: And how long was that?

TROY GENT: I think it was five weeks.

REBECCA GENT: And what did training look like as an infantryman?

TROY GENT: Yeah, so in boot camp…

There's ways around it, there's always loopholes, but they were supposed to have the lights off for eight hours.

And in School of Infantry, since we were Marines now, there was no…

Like, "We're gonna keep you up all night if we want to like there's no...

REBECCA GENT: No protecting you.

TROY GENT: Yeah, there was no protecting us because we weren't recruits anymore.

So I remember in the School of Infantry the worst part about it was them waking us up at two and three in the morning and nothing happening until like seven.

We weren't allowed to sleep, but we were supposed to be in our squad bay.

And so we had foot lockers and so we would lay on our foot lockers and they're only…

For someone my size…

I'm six foot two and at that time I was over two-hundred pounds.

I think on those foot lockers, half of my back fit on those things.

Well, that's an exaggeration.

If I had the back of my head on a foot locker, the other end of the foot locker was probably quarter of the way up my back from my butt.

And so you'd lay on it but there was really no rest.

You weren't allowed to be in your rack so for...

And it varied but for three or four hours we'd just like, "What is happening?

There's nothing going on!

Why are we awake?!"

REBECCA GENT: Every morning was like that?

TROY GENT: Yeah, every morning.

We did get three weekends off.

So from about Friday at night until Sunday at night on three of the five weekends, we got to go out and have lit Liberty.

But besides that, I remember it seemed like, unless we were in the field, every day you'd get up, get out of your rack at two or three in the morning, and then you just lay and sit around on your footlocker for three or four hours.

It was so awful.

REBECCA GENT: I've kind of been trying to get inspiration for some of your content on Instagram and I came across this one guy and one of his reels was, "Nothing turns a drill instructor on more than like a unlocked footlocker."

Does that make sense?

Or does that sound familiar?

TROY GENT: Yep.

If they see an unlocked footlocker, they just shred it.

They'll open it up and just throw things everywhere.

REBECCA GENT: Obviously, I don't have experience with that but I thought it was pretty funny, especially just the way he portrayed it.

But another thing he was talking about or like he was doing reels about was stealing peanut butter packets from the chow hall.

TROY GENT: The chow hall?

REBECCA GENT: Yeah.

TROY GENT: Yeah.

REBECCA GENT: Did you ever do that?

TROY GENT: No, I never did that and I don't remember a recruit in my platoon ever getting in trouble for having contraband food.

You get three meals a day and that's it.

There's no exceptions to the rule and if they find snacks in your footlocker, they'll either decide to just make an example of you or make an example of the whole platoon or just the squad that that kid belongs to or something.

It just depends on the mood of the drill instructor, but that's justification to tear the whole squad bay apart.

REBECCA GENT: A peanut butter packet.

TROY GENT: A peanut butter packet.

Well, you heard San's story about the guy that came back from Liberty when they were in OCS.
He said, "I hope you don't find my cocaine."

And he just tore the whole squad bay apart.

REBECCA GENT: After getting out of infantry school, what kind of happened after that and what was your favorite part about being an enlisted Marine?

TROY GENT: So our main instructor, he was a Sergeant, he said, "Where does everybody want to be stationed?"

And everybody was like, "We want to go to Hawaii!"

Right?

This is in school of infantry.

And he says, "Well, guess what?

You're going to the biggest beach on the planet!"

And we were like, "Yeah!"

We were all excited.

We didn't even know what that meant.

We just thought that meant Hawaii.

Right?

He starts laughing.

He's like, "You're going to 29 palms, you morons!"

And so we were like, "29 palms?

What's that?"

I don't even know what it was.

You know?

We found out that it was two and a half hours North East and we all got on a bus and we got there.

We were driving into Yucca Valley and through Palm Springs.

I think by the time we got to Palm Springs, we were like, "Oh, this is gross."

And then we get to 29 Palms and it was like, "Wow."

But the training was phenomenal.

Training wise, I wouldn't want to be stationed anywhere else.

Liberty wise, it was the worst place that a Marine could imagine.

REBECCA GENT: Do you feel like they send a lot of new Marines to 29 Palms?

TROY GENT: The third battalion, seventh Marines needed a dump of boots.

We just happened to be the ones that drew the card.

REBECCA GENT: I feel like I've just heard a lot of Marines talk about that place specifically.

TROY GENT: Well, everybody goes there.

The training is so good that every unit in the Marine Corps, at least infantry units, airwing units, track units, every combat MOS, will go to 29 palms because 29 palms has the best training.

The one thing I will say about SOI…

I never stood guard duty with a loaded M16 until after I got to the fleet.

There was a dump of Marines that got out of bootcamp that had to wait for us to get there, my dump of bootcamp Marines.

And so they give them things to do as they're waiting to pick up.

And so I didn't have to do it because I got there and then we picked up.

But there was a bunch of Marines that had gotten there and had to wait around.

They have you stand guard duty and things.

Well, this Marine decided that he didn't want to be a Marine anymore.

He gets to SOI and they're saying, "Hey, you got to wait for this other dump of boot camp graduates to pick up."

So they made him stand guard duty with all the other Marines that were with him and he decided that he was going to shoot himself in the foot and say it was an accident.

He pointed the M16 at his foot but then he flinched.

He missed but then he did it again and he shot himself a second time.

And they're like, "What happened?!"

And he said, "It was an accident!"

They're like, "Yeah, you don't have accidents twice like that."

Right?

Not back to back.

REBECCA GENT: And this is where you met Jeff, right?

TROY GENT: Yeah, so he was my squad leader and it was an instant friendship.

Like as soon as I met him, there was an attraction there that was like, "Man, you're my friend."

"I'm your friend."

“Cool.”

“Let's do this."

REBECCA GENT: He was slightly above you, not in rank, but just because he had been gotten there first.
Right?

TROY GENT: Well, he had gotten there first and he was a rank above me.

I got promoted to E2 the day I got to boot camp because I was an Eagle Scout and I don't know what he was promoted to E2 when he first got there for, but he became the company honor guide so he got promoted a second time in boot camp.

So he left boot camp as a Lance corporal when most people leave boot camp either as a private or a private first class.

So he was squared away and so when he got to The School of Infantry, he was a rank above everybody else already.

When that happens, they automatically just say, "Okay, you're going to be a squad leader."

If he fails, then they'll make someone else a squad leader but right when he got there, they knew that he was the company honor guide for boot camp and his company and so they just automatically made him one of our leaders at The School of Infantry.

Every night they make a fire watch list.

In the Marine Corps, there are always buddy teams, so two people on fire watch at all times.

And it's more like a guard duty.

They're watching for fires, but they just call it fire watch.

But basically, it's just someone's awake so that someone has eyes on any threats that might happen while everybody else is sleeping.

In the Marine Corps, were always watching each other's backs that way.

I looked at the list before I went to bed.

I was not on the list and it was Jeff's responsibility to make up the list.

I don't feel like he showed me any favoritism.

When someone works hard, there are privileges involved.

You attract what you sow and I think that I was such a hard worker that Jeff, my last name being Gent, it should have been on that night's fire watch.
It went through the list alphabetically, but then it skipped me.

So was like, "Okay."

I didn't do that but that's just the way it was that night and I was like, "Oh, I don't got fire watch."

I just didn't give it a second thought.

And so I don't know, at midnight or something, someone shakes me awake and they say, "Hey, Gent.

Wake up.

You got firewatch."

And I said, "What are you talking about?

I checked the list before I went to bed."

They're like, "No, your name's on it."

And so I get up and I shine a flashlight on it and the kid that erased his name put my name in there.

This kid actually became my roommate in the fleet and when I saw him when I went in my room in a fleet when I first got there, I thought I had been rid of him.

And so I walked in my room in the fleet and I saw him in there and was like, "Oh, no."

Him and I did not get along in SOI but we actually became friends so no negative feelings towards him.

But he did scratch out my name or scratched out his name and put my name on there instead.

REBECCA GENT: Was it because yours was supposed to be there alphabetically?

TROY GENT: He was going to have Firewatch anyway, even if I was on there, because our names were right next to each other alphabetically.

But he saw an opportunity.

Like, "Well, Gent's not on there and I don't have to make any other typos.

All I have to do is or erase my name and put Gent's on there."

Because my name was the one that was missing.

And so he did it before he went to bed and I got woken up instead.

And then I was like, "Man, that's messed up, dude."

So I went and I woke Jeff up.

I was like, "Hey, Holt."

I won't say his name, but I said, "He erased his name and put my name in there instead."

So Jeff gets up and he verifies it.

He looks at the firewatch list and it's still dark in the squad bay.

We're using flashlights.

He sees it and he can see that I'm telling the truth.

He was like, "That son of a bitch."

And he goes and he just overturns this kids rack and starts screaming at him in the middle of the night.

He forces him to get up and stand fire and I went back to bed.

Yep, that was my favorite story about Jeff in SOI.

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TROY GENT: The great thing about the Marine Corps is blacks, whites, Mexicans, Indians, I don't care who it is, the Marine Corps puts us all in one spot and we're forced to get along, we're forced to become friends, and you don't care anymore what the person looks like.

You just care about them pulling their weight and you guys just work together as a team.

REBECCA GENT: I've seen a lot of black Marines, a lot of Latino Marines, and white Marines.

How often would you come across an Indian Marine like you just said?

I think I saw a couple of them.

I think the most out of place Marine that I experienced was a Korean Marine who joined the US Marine Corps so he'd get citizenship in the US.

He had been in the Korean Marine Corps and decided, "I want to be an American."

And so he came and joined the US Marine Corps and he was a subordinate of mine, actually.

I was a corporal and his squad leader.

But he'd tell us crazy stories.

He'd say, "Yeah, in the Korean Marine Corps they'd make us stand on our head with no hands for..."

I wouldn't say hours at a time, that's probably impossible, but that's one of their punishments.

"Stand on your head!"

His head looked like he had been standing on his head for hours at a time.

It was so warped and out of place.

I was like, “That is the weirdest looking head I've ever seen in my life.”

REBECCA GENT: So he had gone through training in the Korean military but joined the US military?

TROY GENT: Yeah, so he said, "Some things are harder.

Some things aren't as hard as the Korean Marine Corps.

REBECCA GENT: Was there ever a time where you had requested a certain location and then were disappointed when you got assigned to another base?

TROY GENT: Well, once we were in 29 Palms…

That was the lowest of the low so you couldn't get any worse than that.

So if you subtract deployments and training, I spent about five years of my eight years in the Marine Corps in 29 palms.

The one thing I didn't like about Quantico and Okinawa and Thailand and Tinian and Guam was the humidity.

29 Palms was hot but you'd dry off so quick after you'd sweat.

I've always had prickly heat problems like crazy and if so I get in humidity, especially with all that gear on and stuff, my chest will break out in a rash on my back.

It's just really uncomfortable.

I didn't like the training as much in those places.

Being wet is miserable.

Being wet and cold is even more miserable.

It's interesting.

Sometimes I'll be out in the rain and get a little cold in civilian life now, whether I'm hiking or doing something with the family and we get wet or whatever and you get a little cold and I just think, "In about half an hour I'll be home and I'll change my clothes and I'll be happy.

In the Marine Corps, you'd get wet and you'd think, "Ugh.

It's going to be like this for another week."

Oh, man.

Yeah, I hated that.

REBECCA GENT: Was it like that in Okinawa too?

TROY GENT: Yeah, it was really wet in Okinawa.

REBECCA GENT: And I've never heard a lot about those two deployments.

I don't know.

I never really asked.

Generally, I just never heard too much about them.

Could you expand upon your experiences there and what you were doing there, what your responsibilities were, interactions with the locals, and that kind of thing.

TROY GENT: Sure.

So the only interaction I had with the locals was those that worked on base and only a couple of them.
Nothing significant.

We were pretty much told to keep to ourselves, even on liberty.

"Go out and respect the population.

If you're out in town, just respect those around you and things.

Don't be stupid.

REBECCA GENT: I guess the Japanese culture is pretty respectful as a whole.

That's what I've heard.

It isn't like Thailand where you go out and you have a crazy time.

It sounds like it's pretty chill.

TROY GENT: There's probably places on mainland Japan that you'd have your districts or whatever that military personnel know they can go and have a wild time but there was nothing that I had ever heard of about that.

And Okinawa, I didn't never hear of any of that.

Like it seemed like they were a pretty disciplined people overall.

I never heard any stories or places that Marines went that it was just really ruckus.

But like in Thailand, some of the places we visited were party central.

Right?

Just whatever you want, whenever you want it, you can get it.

I got drunk in Thailand one night.

It was funny.

I was already really drunk and we were on our way back to a hotel and we were on a bot bus.

Me and my buddy, the one that I didn't like in SOI but we became roommates and good friends, we got out of the bot bus and we were like, "They dropped us off on the wrong location!"

We were both drunk.

Right?

And like, "That's messed up!"

And then I said, "Dude, let's buy some more alcohol!"

And he goes, "Okay!"

And I said, "How many more do you think we can handle?"

There were these thirty-two ounce beers that I was looking at in the shop.

Right?

I was like, "I can drink eight more of those."

So we bought eight thirty-two ounce beers and we were already drunk.

We were so drunk we didn't know that our hotel was behind us.

So we got dropped off in the right location, but we were so drunk we were like, "They dropped us off in the wrong location!"

So we bought the beers because we thought we were lost, but then we turned around and our hotel was right there.

The funny thing is I drank one of those and then I passed out.

Right?

I was gone.

When I woke up the next morning, there was only one left.

I was like, "How in the heck is there only one of those left?"

I couldn't believe it.

REBECCA GENT: Either your friend threw him out the window or he drank them.

TROY GENT: There were four of us in the room but the other two weren't really…

They had been drinking a little bit but they were still able to function.

Yeah, I barfed two times that night.

I crawled to the toilet and was losing my guts but I only drank twice in the Marine Corps.

In eight years, I only drank twice and that was one of them.

REBECCA GENT: I liked what Curtis said on his interview.

How he was like, "Yeah, you saved a lot of money, dude."

TROY GENT: "Thousands of dollars," he said.

Yeah.

REBECCA GENT: Back to Okinawa, I guess one of the things I heard was that you spent a lot of time in on a fishing charter.

TROY GENT: So that was once and that was in Guam.

Yeah, the last day we were in Guam, we decided that we wanted to rent a fishing charter and go out on the ocean.

I got five or six of us that split the cost.

The water was gorgeous.

The weather was beautiful.

It was the most beautiful day on the water.

And Guam water is…

You've seen Kailua Kona water in Hawaii.

It's like that.

It’s just gorgeous.

Right?

But the waves that day were insane.

Like we're looking at six, eight, ten foot swells.

And so the whole time, for about eight hours, we were just up and down and up and down.

And we caught a ton of fish, most of them were yellow fin tuna, but everybody was laying on the floor of the boat because everybody was so sick.

I didn't throw up, but I was sick the whole time, and then everybody else…

I think Chris Coates was the only one.

For some reason I can remember him not throwing up.

We were all really sick.

The captain was laughing at us the whole time.

This guy did this every day.

People were barfing over the side constantly.

It was just…

It was a really fun but really miserable day at the same time.

REBECCA GENT: Well, I have a lot more questions but maybe we should do a part two to this.

We can cover the second half of your active duty.

TROY GENT: Oh, the officer stuff?

REBECCA GENT: Yeah.

TROY GENT: Let me think of a couple more stories here.

Well, let me think of one more about Okinawa since you're asking.

I just talked about the first deployment so the second deployment to Okinawa, I was assigned a FAP.

They call it FAP, Fleet Assistance Program.

Basically, they outsourced me to do something different than what infantry Marines do.

And so I was actually assigned as the non-commissioned officer in charge of battalion duty drivers.

There were five of us and we all took turns being on twenty-four hour shifts to be on call to either drive the battalion commander around where he needed to go or to run any errands that the battalion command needed.

Besides the weekend, five days a week we would all work during the day and then there was one person on a twenty-four hour shift each day.

So we were on a five day rotation basically.

The craziest call that one of my guys got…

I didn't get this call, but they got a call that there was a naked Marine walking around base on like a Saturday night or something.

Butt-naked.

Right?

REBECCA GENT: Yeah.

TROY GENT: They get him out of his room and say, "Hey, we got to go find this naked Marine."

Or I guess they didn't know he was a Marine.

They figured he was a Marine because he was white.

He wasn't Japanese.

So he was walking around the base, butt-naked.

And they found him.

He was just kind of sitting on the side of the road in front of the headquarters battalion or something for Camp Schwab.

He didn't have any ID on him or anything.

I don't know.

I guess he was still sleepwalking.

They couldn't ask him questions.

I don't know why they just didn't shake him awake or anything.

But they started calling around the different duties saying, "Hey, do you guys have a sleepwalker?"

And they finally called recon battalion that was there on Camp Schwab, and they said, "Hey, do you have a sleepwalking Marine?"

And they go, "Oh, yeah.

That's so and so."

And they're like, "Yeah, we found him.

He's buck naked."

They're like, "Yeah, he likes to sleep naked so he probably decided that he needed to get up and sleepwalk buck naked around the base."

My driver said it was so funny because they were like, "Okay, grab him."

And so he had to grab him and kind of manhandle him being buck naked and put him up in a Humvee.

REBECCA GENT: I guess at that point, you guys are all close and everything.

It's probably not as embarrassing as if you guys had just shown up and that was in boot camp or something.

TROY GENT: Yeah, all kinds of weird stuff went on in the Marine Corps.

Stuff that went on in the barracks was out of control.

It was like a wild college dorm party every weekend but with people who had a little bit of discipline in their bodies.

Unless they got a whole bunch of alcohol in them and then all discipline kind of went out the window.

OUTRO: Thank you for listening.

Please tell your friends and family so that we can bring more joy and awareness to those struggling with suicide ideation and the families who desperately need help after the loss of someone they love to suicide.