Private No-Nuts
PODCAST INTRODUCTION: Hello everyone and welcome to Ghost Turd Stories.
I'm your host, Troy Gent.
Ghost Turd Stories mission is using humorous stories from veterans and first responders to reduce the burden of families whose veteran or first responder committed suicide.
Ghost Turd Stories vision is to use humor from veteran and first responder stories to prevent suicide within our ranks and reduce the burden of families whose veteran or first responder committed suicide.
We hoped 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.
TROY GENT: Welcome to Ghost Turd Stories.
This is Troy Gent, your host.
Today I have my father as a guest.
He's a veteran from the Vietnam era.
He served in the National Guard.
Welcome, Dad.
How are you?
ROBERT GENT: Absolutely fantastic, Troy.
Good to be here.
TROY GENT: My dad's name is Robert Gent.
Dad, what units did you serve with when you were in the National Guard?
ROBERT GENT: Actually, I went into the Army Reserve.
I wanted to go in the Marine Corps originally but I'd been out of high school for about three and a half years.
I had a year of college.
I was in South America for two and a half years on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
I got home and couldn't get into the Marine Corps unit in Portland, Oregon.
I didn't want to go full-time.
I wanted a reserve unit and I found an army reserve unit in Vancouver Army Barracks.
And so I enlisted in the United States Army Reserve in the late spring of 1964, nearly sixty years ago.
TROY GENT: Sixty years ago.
What was your MOS?
ROBERT GENT: Actually they put me as a clerk typist, which I hated and so I switched over to armored cavalry.
I was in armored cavalry units and artillery.
TROY GENT: You were originally assigned as a clerk typist but how long did it take for you to realize or to tell someone, "Hey, this ain't gonna work for me.
I gotta switch."
ROBERT GENT: That was after I got out of basic training and advanced training.
After basic training, they put me as the clerk typist in Fort Irwin, California, not very far from the great desert there.
TROY GENT: Why did they do that?
What did they see in you that said, "He's a clerk typist?"
ROBERT GENT: Because I had pretty good English skills and I had a year of college.
That's why.
I could chew gum and walk down the hall at the same time and I could spell my name so they made me a clerk typist.
TROY GENT: That's something to be said about joining the military.
Some guys literally can't walk and chew gum at the same time.
ROBERT GENT: I experienced that when I was in basic training.
I was at Fort Ord, California.
We had over a hundred thousand troops.
It was one of the largest training areas in the United States.
Regardless of whether you were in the National Guard or the Army Reserve, you were in a regular Army unit.
And our company, Company A, had about a hundred and fifty regular Army unit members in basic training.
We had about a hundred National Guard troops from Idaho, of all places, and then there were several of us that were Army Reserve in that unit.
It was a different world at that time, pre-Vietnam.
And the idea was that if you got in trouble or didn't graduate from high school and got in trouble with the law, they gave you a choice often.
"Do you want to go in the army or do you want to go to jail?"
And they cleaned up a lot of the military after Vietnam but I was in a unit of Individuals a lot of them got in trouble with the law and today they wouldn't even qualify for the United States military.
Today only about two out of every ten qualify to even be inducted into the military.
At that time, if you could chew gum, walk down the hall at the same time, and spell your name, they'd let you in the military.
So it was, crazy.
I was in a Company unit with some crazy people.
I don't mean to demean the military in any way but I’d had a year of college, I'd been in South America for two and a half years, and there I was in the United States Army in Fort Ord, California with a bunch of National Guard troops from Idaho.
Most of them were from Idaho and like I said, some of those individuals had a choice to either go to jail or go in the army.
Vietnam was heating up and so they said, "Oh, I'll go in the army."
That gives you a bit of background on the unit.
There was some crazy things that went on there.
I'm a very serious-minded person.
I'm highly competitive.
And yet, I'm always in for a good laugh.
And I don't mean to demean anybody but some of the things that happened to me, you can't hardly help but laugh.
The regular army cadre, a lot of those had served in World War II and had been in Korea and they had been in combat situations.
There they were with a bunch of recruits that weren't highly respected.
They referred to them as no goods.
Well, how would that make you feel if you were in the regular Army unit and they were saying you were no good?
Well, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy that some of them acted about the way that they were treated.
But some of the things that happened made me wonder about how they even got into the National Guard and I can tell you about those if you're interested.
TROY GENT: Yeah, I'd love to hear them.
Well, first off, they would line up in Fort Ord, California, and we had this first sergeant I had little respect for.
I forgot his name.
I wanted to forget his name.
I wanted to forget who he was but he was the most dirty-mouthed individual that I had ever been around.
And there we were at 5:30 in the morning, company formation, and he would start cussing us out and I would sit there.
And I just spent two and a half years in South America for an LDS mission for my church, talking about the things of God.
In our initial formations, they would call out names.
Some of those individuals, I thought, "Well, how in the world did they even get into any military organization?"
They looked like they were pretty out of shape to me and of course, I was about twenty-three and they were seventeen to eighteen years old in the guard units.
We had this one fellow.
He had to have weighed three hundred pounds and his name was of Private George or Georgie or something.
I forget exactly but anyway.
Right off the bat, they said, "Hey, Fat Boy!"
He was Private Fat Boy.
"Private Fat Boy!"
"Yes, Sergeant."
"Drop down and give me five!
Drop down and give me five!"
"Yes, Sergeant."
He dropped down and there was no way he was going to give him five, give him four, give him three, give him two.
He couldn't even give him one!
"Private Fat Boy!
Give me one!"
He would grunt and roll around and all of us were sitting there sort of serious feeling sorry for him.
And then he says, "Hey, hey!
You troopers, get down and pick the fat boy up, okay?"
They picked the fat boy up.
They knew that he wasn't going to make it.
He says, "Fat boy, follow at the back of the company!"
And he was through.
And after that, we had regular training and Private Fatboy was out there doing the sprinklers until they got him out.
We thought he was pretty fortunate.
Maybe we should act like that so he didn't have to go through the regular training.
So Private Fatboy made it for two weeks before they sent him home back to Idaho.
Now that was one of our introductions.
The other was they'd do anything they could to demean the last names of people.
And we had this one private.
Neutznauske I think.
I still remember his name.
Something like Neutznauske and the first sergeant had trouble.
He said, "Private Neutz...
Private Neutz...
Private...
No nuts!"
We couldn't help it.
We all broke up.
"Private no nuts!"
He says, "You are Private No Nuts."
So we'd go through training and he did pretty good.
He'd stick with us and this and that and then we finally got to rifle training.
We didn't train on the M16.
We trained on the M14.
And to a little bit, on the firing range of fifty meters to three hundred meters and it was open sights and I got pretty good.
I qualified as expert.
But leading up to that, they gave a little bit of background on how easy it was to fire an M14.
So there we were before we got on the firing line.
The training sergeant said, "Well, we want to tell you gentlemen that there's no danger whatsoever.
There's no kick to these M14s.
They're harmless.
You just have to put them up your shoulder and squeeze the trigger.
The blanks recoil the same as a regular bullet."
And so they went through some training and then all of a sudden the first sergeant had cued the training sergeants in on private no nuts.
And all of a sudden, he says, "Private No Nuts, get up here!
I want you to put this M14 up your shoulders and just pull the trigger."
And he did.
"Ka bang!"
"Did that hurt?"
"Oh, no.
That was great."
"Okay, No Nuts.
Put it down towards your stomach."
"Ka bang!"
"That's great!"
Then he says, "Pull it a little close to your groin there."
He squeezed away, and then, "Kababang!
Bang!"
He said, “Did that hurt?”
"No, that was alright."
"Oh!
Look at this!
Look at this!
Oh!"
And so that training sergeant put his hands down.
He had three or four marbles in his hands underneath his gun as he said, "Look at this!
Private No Nuts, these are your nuts!”
He said, "Okay, Private No Nuts.
What are you going to do now?"
And he said, "I can have sex and I don't need to worry about it!"
I couldn't believe it.
They were always pulling him out.
So finally, we went through the tear gas chamber and he made it.
We went through the chlorine chamber.
In the chlorine chamber, you have a gas mask on.
You keep your gas mask on.
You have to go in and take the gas mask off but you get a good breath of fresh air because you have to state your name, rank, and cellular number.
Me, it was, "Private Gent ER19803156."
You don't take a breath.
And poor Naswalski, he took a breath.
They had to pull him out and beat on his chest.
Hey, but bless his heart.
He made it.
And then we had the machine gun test.
We had to crawl under wire at night and machine guns were firing live rounds over us.
We had barbed wire and Constantino, we had to crawl through that at night.
They said it was live rounds, those M60 machine guns.
Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but that's what they told us.
They said, "If you get your butt up in the air, what's gonna happen?"
Some guy says, "Well you get your butt shot off."
"That's right, Trooper!
You'll get your butt shot off.
So keep your butt down."
Then they hit us with tear gas.
We had to mask up.
So they call us all out to make sure we're all there.
"Where in the world's Private No Nuts at?"
And so they had to turn the lights on.
It was rather sad.
There he was right in the middle of the concertina wire.
They had to go out and pull him out.
And stood him in front of all of us and they said, "What happened?
What happened Private No Nuts?"
And he wet his pants.
“What happened Private No Nuts?!”
He said, "I guess I wet my pants."
I mean, I couldn't help it.
We were all laughing, you know?
But we made it through those six months of training.
I graduated from college but I was still in the Army Reserve.
But when I moved back to Oregon and got a job, I was in that "No Name, No Good" National Guard, Oregon.
And honestly, Troy, it got worse.
It was crazy.
TROY GENT: Well, it makes sense because in basic training, like there are barriers on each side.
But once you get in a unit, there's a lot more flexibility for people to do stupid things because they have so much more agency.
So it makes sense that it would get worse.
ROBERT GENT: I was in for six years.
Then I was out and I went back in after Vietnam in the eighties and they had cleaned it up.
They had to clean it up.
TROY GENT: So when did you get out the first time?
ROBERT GENT: I got out in 1971 and then I went back in 1979 or 1980.
TROY GENT: Okay, and then you did what, four more or six more?
ROBERT GENT: It was six years.
TROY GENT: Six more.
ROBERT GENT: And it was the National Guard unit.
But in that Oregon National Guard, it was crazy what went on.
One of the situations was we'd get in big touring buses and leave from Dalles, Oregon in the evening.
We would go to Boise, Idaho and the unit there, we were trained outside of Boise in Gowan Field and it was desert all the way from Freeway eighty-four all the way to the Snake River.
Big training area.
A lot of times at night, we would have night maneuvers.
I was in scouts and the scouts were in jeeps and of course a lot of times we were wired between two M60 tanks and you had to be careful because you just had your night lights and those big M60s...
I mean, they'll crush a jeep.
And so you're fairly alert and we had blanks and simulated combat situations and I'll never forget one situation.
We had this platoon sergeant and we just did not have respect for him.
I don't know what he did on the outside but he was out of control.
And he was an E5 but he would do anything because he wanted to jump to an E6.
And so he would give his platoon all these dirty details.
We'd have to pick up garbage and do this and that.
TROY GENT: He'd volunteer his men a lot.
Yeah, he would volunteer us and he would sit in his jeep and drink beer or smoke cigarettes.
I think his name was Sergeant Smart.
, We detested him.
We were on maneuvers one night and he had volunteered us to do the work and he'd sit drinking beer and smoking cigarettes.
TROY Gent: They would let him have beer out in the field back then?
ROBERT GENT: They would.
It was crazy.
That was pre-Vietnam.
We'd have to round up about two o'clock in the morning and then you had blanks.
You had to clear your weapons with Sergeant Smart.
We call him Sergeant Smart Ass.
And so anyway, we were all lined up there and he’d say, "Weapon clear."
And of course you’d have to click click.
Taking the blanks out.
Click, click, click, click.
But no one knew where anyone was at because it was dark and half asleep and he would put his head down and, "Clear weapon!"
Click, click.
TROY GENT: He was looking down...
ROBERT GENT: Into the weapon.
TROY GENT: Like in the barrel or Into the chamber?
ROBERT GENT: Into the chamber.
TROY GENT: Into the chamber.
Okay.
ROBERT GENT: Yeah, he would look into the chamber and it's two o'clock in the morning.
We'd be in on all day long.
We were half tired and he was half asleep.
And a fellow trooper left his blanket on purpose.
So he put his head down to the chamber, "Clear weapon!"
"Gah bang!"
At 02:30 in the morning and he said, "Who did that?!"
And no one was going to say anything.
There was about thirty of us lined up and someone bounced around.
He said, "Give me the name of that person!
Give me the name of that person!
I want him!
I want him!"
No one said anything and so we got back at him a little bit that way.
And then the next day they gave us some more dirt but that was all right.
Out of the field, it was fifty miles back into the barracks there at Gowan Field.
We were in tents and it was rough and it was hot.
My lips were really bothering me so I got permission to go back in.
We had a break for about six or eight hours.
TROY GENT: Would they take them back in on a troop transport or a bus?
ROBERT GENT: We went on a deuce and a half.
So a lot of people took advantage of that and they were drinking back in the barracks.
And so we were in the back of that deuce and a half driving back out to the unit and this was about 1968.
And so we were on our way back and of course if you drink a lot of beer, what happens is you gotta urinate.
And so they were still hungover and I was sitting in the back of that duse and a half watching him.
And so this guy said, "Hey, I gotta take a piss."
And so they were urinating outta the back of the deuce and a half.
Well, there's a jeep behind of us and the guy said, "Hey, I'm gonna piss on that Jeep!"
And he had quite a bit of urine.
So he did and it landed on the back of the jeep
They put their windshield wipers on and everyone was having fun.
What they didn't realize was that was the battalion commander in that jeep.
We had some bedding in the back and so the guys that were still hung over said, "Hey, I wonder what it'd be like to throw this mattress in that jeep."
And he took the mattress out and he threw the mattress over the jeep.
It wrapped around the windshield of the jeep and the battalion commander and the jeep went off the road.
It was hilarious.
And they didn't know that it was the battalion commander.
And he pulled back on and came over and honked his horn and pulled us over.
We had to jump out as they went through trying to find out who did it.
That was welcome to the National Guard.
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ROBERT GENT: Backing up a little bit to basic training, that first sergeant In Fort Ord, California, for some reason I felt he didn't like me.
I'm highly competitive.
Anytime we would have any competition at all, I always tried to finish towards the top of the group
He'd always say, "Gent, you think you're better than us?"
I'd say, "No, sergeant.
No, sergeant."
We were on train fire one day at Fort Ord.
It's beautiful there.
During lunch hour, they'd bring lunch in.
We'd have our mess kits.
I'd just try to find a post to sit on.
And there's a lot of dust and I was sitting and eating.
I was separated a little bit from the other members of the company.
Of course the language is pretty coarse and maybe that was part of it but I wanted something against my back.
I was sitting there and he said, "Gent!
Gent!
Gent!"
In front of the whole company, he called me out and he liked the attention he was getting.
And nothing against Southern people but he was a Southerner and he spoke with a Southern accent.
"Do you think you better than us, son?"
I said, "No sergeant.
"Son, when I talk to you, I want you to run to me.
Understand, son?"
“Yes, sergeant.”
" Now, son.
You go back there to that post and you crawl to me."
And there I was in six inches of dust.
I was trying to eat lunch and I crawled to that company commander.
And then, they had tryouts for the battalion track team.
Well, I tried out and I made it and I was on the mile relay team with four outstanding black athletes I was the white boy on the team, and we won the battalion championship so we qualified to go for the four championships.
We could have probably won it.
We were really good.
I'd done nothing wrong and the day we were supposed to go, that first sergeant said, "Gent, you're not going, son.
You're not going, son."
I wasn't gonna argue with him during boot camp so I didn't get a chance to go.
Afterward, the lieutenant that was head of the battalion track team saw me and said, "What happened, Gent?"
I said, "Well..."
And he just shook his head but that's the way it was during boot camp.
Another situation with the Oregon National Guard is we had this Company Commander.
And he was very controlling.
We did not have his respect at all.
He would always threaten us.
When we were headed to summer camp one time in Lurand, Oregon, he was in the group and of course people were waiting to get back at him and they pulled a fire extinguisher off the wall after dark.
They stuck the fire extinguisher in, turned the fire extinguisher on, and before he could get out of the sleeping bag, it was all filled with foam.
No one said anything because there was no respect and what could he do?
TROY GENT: My experience is if you have an officer that doesn't love his men the way that he should, eventually it comes back to bite him.
ROBERT GENT: Yeah, I was a training NCO at Fort Lewis, Washington in one of my summer camps.
I was attached to a regular army unit and one thing I learned is that war is the epitome of dark satanic influences.
War is hell.
Troops headed to Vietnam and eighteen thousand didn't come home.
But there is a God in heaven.
I've talked with other individuals who survived combat situations.
There's a God in heaven that could protect all of us and that I know.
And that source is available to all of us even now as we're going through some troubled times in America.
I have nothing but respect for those who put their life on the line and some of them are six feet under the grass right now.
TROY GENT: Why didn't your unit get called up to Vietnam?
ROBERT GENT: Actually in Vietnam, they didn't call National Guard units up.
They did that in Iraq and Afghanistan.
TROY GENT: That's interesting.
ROBERT GENT: Sadly enough, the joke was they would call up the women and the children before they would call up the National Guard and that's what they told us.
And after what I went through with National Guard troops, to some degree, not to say there are not some outstanding people in the Guard, but there was just a lot of tomfoolery going on there.
It was rather crazy.
But like I said, after Vietnam in the eighties, the recruiter said, "You know, you need to go back in because it's changed."
Because I didn't want anything to do with it.
And I was pretty impressed.
Yes, there was drinking and yes, there was this and that but at least they didn't pull a deuce and a half full of warm beer out into the training area.
TROY GENT: Why didn't you...
So you were in for twelve years total.
Why didn't you stay in for twenty, eight more years?
ROBERT GENT: I would have but I went through a divorce after twenty-two years and then I was remarried and I just listened to the impression within.
And with that marriage and the struggles I had in my previous marriage, I knew it wasn't the right thing to do.
And I was being recruited by the Utah National Guard.
I only had eight more years but I just knew it wasn't the right thing to do.
And so I knew that I needed to do everything I could to make my second marriage a success.
that was it. It was just being hopefully, a decent husband, Troy.
TROY GENT: Well, you've been a good father.
ROBERT GENT: Well, I'm still working on it.
I'm still there.
TROY GENT: I appreciate all the time you've spent with me dad and everything that you've done for me and It means the world that you came on and decided to talk about some of your experiences.
ROBERT GENT: Works both ways.
Yes, you're my son but now it's more like we're brothers and It's been a great journey being your coach and being your dad and still being close to you and getting to know your wife and daughters.
Life doesn't get any better than that, Troy.
Thanks a lot.
TROY GENT: You bet, Dad.
Love you.
Thanks so much.
ROBERT GENT: You're welcome.
PODCAST 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.
