Deck Towel Five-Hundred

Eric joined the Marine Corps in August of 2002 because he wanted to continue the tradition of his family and their service in the military. When the September 11th terrorist attacks happened in 2001,  the deal was sealed and he signed up.  After thirteen weeks of boot camp, he spent forty-five days in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri training to become a heavy equipment operator and fulfilled various roles in that job description during his four years of duty. He achieved the rank of E4 or corporal before being honorably discharged in 2006. 

Eric now owns Southwest Exterminators and is a successful business owner. He is the ultimate pest assassin as his company kills countless bugs of all sorts every day. He lives with his beautiful wife and kids and they enjoy the bounties of living in America.

If you are interested in having your story written, visit linktr.ee/ghostturdstories and select the 'Let us write your story!" tab to find all inquiry and pricing information. 

To learn more about Isagenix, visit nmp.isagenix.com

Creators & Guests

Host

Troy Gent

Troy Gent is the Host of The Ghost Turd Stories Podcast. He served a total of eight years as an infantryman in the US Marine Corps.

Editor

Rebecca Gent

Rebecca is the editor and publisher of The Ghost Turd Stories Podcast.

What is The Ghost Turd Stories Podcast?

The Ghost Turd Stories Podcast was born out of a place of grief. Having lost my best friend from the Marine Corps in the early hours of 2023, I realized that this feeling was all too familiar. I wanted to do something, not only for the loss I felt, but for the loss I knew many families were enduring day to day.

We believe that a major way to relieve the stressors of life is to talk, laugh, cry, and share our experiences without fear of offense. We hope to attract veterans and first responders as well as anyone who is interested in knowing more about what it’s like to be in our shoes while we wear or wore those shoes.

GUEST INTRODUCTION: Eric Palmer joined the Marine Corps in August of 2002 because he wanted to continue the tradition of his family and their service in the military. When the September 11th terrorist attacks happened in 2001, the deal was sealed and he signed up.

After thirteen weeks of boot camp, he spent forty-five days in Fort Leonardwood, Missouri training to become a heavy equipment operator and fulfilled various roles in that job description during his four years of duty, to include squad leader. He achieved the rank of E4 or Corporal before being honorably discharged in 2006.

He served in Iraq during Operation Enduring Freedom one, two, three, and four and volunteered to stay with different units when he didn't have to.

Eric now owns Southwest Exterminators and is a successful business owner. He is the ultimate pest assassin, as his company kills countless bugs of all sorts every day. He lives with his beautiful wife and kids where they enjoy the bounties of living in America.

PODCAST INTRODUCTION: PODCAST INTRODUCTION: Hello everyone and welcome to The Ghost Turd Stories Podcast. I'm your host Troy Gent.

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

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

We hope to attack veterans or 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 that there is nothing more inspiring and nothing that gets people to take action like a great story.

Family and friends want to know the sacrifices we made, the services we rendered, and the people we lifted so that 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 is 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!

TROY GENT: Eric, thank you so much for joining me on this podcast. Tell me a little bit about how you joined the Marine Corps, why you joined the Marine Corps, and when.

ERIC PALMER: Well first, thank you for the opportunity. It is a pleasure to be here.

I come from a military family of multiple generations. Here in Utah, there is this polite expectation that young, worthy men are going to go serve a mission. In my family, there was an expectation that you were going to serve in the military. So it was always percolating in the back of my brain that I was going to join, but I hadn't gotten any of the balls rolling.

September 11th happened and man, that got a whole lot of people's balls rolling to get into the recruiting office. I was still in high school, working at a McDonald's, and the recruiting office for all four branches was in that same shopping center. It was two days after 9-11, I tried to go into the recruiting office, and the line was out the door.

TROY GENT: Really?

ERIC PALMER: I was like, "There is no way I am going to wait in this line. I don't like lines."

TROY GENT: This was where?

ERIC PALMER: Salinas, California.

TROY GENT: Salinas, California. Okay.

ERIC PALMER: I leave and go back a few days later. My grandfather retired Army. My dad was in the Army. I was going to go Army. That was what it was going to be.

I started walking down the hallway and as I pulled into their particular recruiting office, there was a fair number of guys in there, somewhere around a dozen. It wasn't as crazy as it had been a few days prior but I didn't want to wait so I turned around. And as I was walking out of the communal hallway, this absolutely yoked gunny grabbed me by the shoulder, pulled me right in, and said, "If the Army doesn’t want to talk to you boy, I'll be more than happy to talk to you."

Thirty minutes later, I had a delayed entry contract signed for the Marine Corps. I had no intention of joining the Marine Corps when I walked into that office but I am very glad that I did.

TROY GENT: Yeah, they snatched you right up.

ERIC PALMER: Well, he had to make his quota too and I guess I made it too easy on him.

TROY GENT: Sure. I mean, I agree. I am a Marine too, but why were you glad that you joined the Marine Corps instead of the Army?

ERIC PALMER: It really does come down to the spirit decor of Marines and the deep brotherhood. Now, whether you are paramedics, police officers, firefighters, Army, Navy, there is a level of comradery that is uniform between all of these trauma-bonded professions.

I think that the Marine Corps does take it to a higher degree. When I talk to buddies who were soldiers, they will say, "Yeah, I liked my unit but it was a job. Man, it was free college. It was wonderful," and that seemed to be what their focus was. It was whatever the benefits were.

TROY GENT: I don't ever think I've talked to a Marine that has said, "I joined for the money," because if you wanted the money, it's a lot better other places.

ERIC PALMER: Yeah, this is not the best story if you are thinking about joining the Marine Corps, but I have had guys who have come up to me after I've done my combat tours and said, "Hey, I'm looking to go into the military. Should I join the Marine Corps?"

My questions are always the same. First, are you married? If you are married, do not join the Marine Corps. It is just not conducive and it's going to end in divorce. I am just telling you.

If you are looking for the least military-esc military that will give you jobs skills that will transition you into the civilian world, go Air Force. You will still be in the military and get all of your benefits, but it is the least militarized and that is why the other services make fun of the Air Force.

If you want all of those technical skills that you would get in the Air Force but you want to travel, go Navy. But do not go Navy if you are married. Even in peacetime, you're constantly on deployment.

If you are eighteen years old, single, a male, you've got some testosterone, you've got a chip on your shoulder, you've got something to prove, you want an opportunity to travel, but you don't want to have the absolute snot kick out of you, go Army. That will be great for you.

If you are eighteen years old, have way too much testosterone, have a major chip on your shoulder, and just want to get smacked around and smack other people around, that is when you go into the Marine Corps.

TROY GENT: That is why I joined the Marine Corps. I just realized that.

ERIC PALMER: I tell guys that if that describes you then the Marine Corps is going to be great for you. I never want anyone to say that they have chatted with me and that I've led them astray. I want you to know exactly what you are getting into. I'm not a recruiter. I am not looking to make a quota. If you've got too much testosterone and something to prove, man, the Marine Corps is a wonderful place.

I haven't done everything this life has to offer but dagnabbit. I can honestly say that I love the men that was I deployed with and in no other area of my life have I built that level of relationship with another guy.

I have to side note here and thank you yet again. When we spoke offline a few weeks prior to this recording, you asked me to percolate on what I'd want to talk about, what I'd be willing to share, etc. I sat down with my wife to have a conversation and realized just how much I had forgotten. Things that I kind of remember. Like how we were stationed near Faluja but I can't remember what we were doing. So just preparing for this interview gave me an opportunity to reach out to several of my boys, some of whom I haven't talked to in several years, just trying to clarify, because I didn't want to come on your show and tell a story and then have my boys call me out and say, "That's not how that happened. What are you talking about?" I wanted to make sure my facts as straight as I could get them.

One of the stories that most of my boys looked back fondly on was OAF2. I was there for OAF1, the breaking of the berm. The war portion, though it wasn't much of a war. After President Bush went on the USS Regan and said, "Mission accomplished!" is when we started OAF2. At the end of OAF2, I like many other Marines got that dreaded Dear John letter from my fiance. I was totally woman-hating, and didn't want to come home so I stayed out on OAF3. I moved from first MarDiv to second MarDiv and just stayed in Fallujah. I was there for a portion of OAF4.

TROY GENT: For a four-year enlistment, how long were you in Iraq?

ERIC PALMER: I was in theatre a total of six months.

TROY GENT: Jeez.

ERIC PALMER: I look at that now and say that was a blessing because I talk to Marines who spent more time in CONUS (Continental United States) and the amount of... I can't use the word I was going to use... the silly games that get played in the motor pool when you've got nothing to do.

TROY GENT: You can swear on here if you want to.

ERIC PALMER: Okay, the fuck-fuck games. I didn't know where the line was.

TROY GENT: Just tell the story. I am not worried about it.

ERIC PALMER: I hear about what they dealt with and that was just not my reality. It was not my four years.

TROY GENT: Yeah, that seems rare. I know people who have been on lots of deployments but more time in country, like thirty-six months in four years, that's pretty incredible.

ERIC PALMER: Again, I think that was because I volunteered to stay.

TROY GENT: Was that thirty-six months concurrently?

ERIC PALMER: No, that was between all four deployments. That was thirty-six months cumulatively.

TROY GENT: But you weren't back more than a couple of months each time.

ERIC PALMER: Correct. I think there was one time I was only back for a little over two months. It wasn't even a full three months.

TROY GENT: Okay.

ERIC PALMER: We built our own hot tub while we were out there and I can't take credit for this. I helped on the project but Corporal Hilsgan was the guy that led this. We were stationed at Altacodum Air Force base, which was Sadam's Air Force base that we had taken over, and we had converted it into our tarmac.

The Air Force was coming in and as a heavy equipment operator while we were at this particular portion of the mission, it was logistical support. We had the tarmac that we were manning and The SMU (The Supply Management Unit). I don't know if this is true or not but I was informed that at that time, the Fallujah was the second largest supply management unit in the entire Marine Corps. We had over one million individual serial numbers that were in this SMU. We knew where everything was because we were the ones that put it there.

TROY GENT: Yeah.

ERIC PALMER: There was also this dump nearby. So we had access to supply, we had access to the dump, and for the most part, especially while we were in country, people just left the heavy equipment operators alone.

Hilsgan gets this great idea that he wants to build a hot tub.

TROY GENT: Who is at the top of the food chain within this little unit of yours that knows that you are doing this?

ERIC PALMER: I don't know if anyone knew that we were doing what we were doing. This was the genius of our plan. For those of you who have been in the military, if you are familiar with Air Force pallets, these are large flat pallets that fit into military transport vehicles. If you've ever watched the movie Dumbo Drop, which now I'm dating myself, that large metal plate that they put the elephant on when they are parachuting them into Vietnam, that's an Air Force pallet.

Well an Air Force pallet fits perfectly into an ISO container, the shipping connex containers you see at port. We intentionally built our hot tub on an Air Force pallet, so that when command did come down, we could hide it in the ISO container, lock it up, and no one could find it.

Several of us in HE Platoon started scavenging for parts. We were able to find two broken water heaters and enough parts to get them functioning. They weren't great but they certainly made hotter water. We stole the hydraulic hoses from Motor T. Thank you Motor T. Your sacrifice was well enjoyed.

We got the timbers for building the decking around the hot tub from the supply management unit. I think we got that through legitimate means. I don't think we stole those. But I think it's been far enough away that I can fully admit without worrying about military justice coming after me, the five-thousand-gallon tank, I stole that from the Army and I am not even sorry about it. I took an MMV (Military Millenium Vehicle), a forklift, and I left the Marine Corps area of Fullujah and went over to the Army area.

The Army has more stuff. They have a larger budget. They are more well-supplied than the Marine Corps is and they had this motor pool that has all of the spare components, so I thought, "Alright, they've got enough over there anyway. I am just going to go over there and take one of those."

I dipped my forks right into the sand to get underneath this five-thousand-gallon tank, picked it up, and started to drive away.

TROY GENT: Was this in the middle of the day?

ERIC PALMER: Just in the middle of the day, right around lunchtime.

TROY GENT: Were you wearing Marine Corps stuff?

ERIC PALMER: Yep, full uniform. I did nothing to conceal myself. I wasn't trying to be stealthy in the least. They say that the easiest time to steal is if you look like your doing. I looked like I knew what I was doing. I acted like it was just part of my mission.

TROY GENT: Did you do any recon before that?

ERIC PALMER: No! I drove by. There is is. I'm gonna take it.

TROY GENT: Were you even looking for it at the time?

ERIC PALMER: Yes.

As a unit or a platoon, we talked about what we needed and where we were going to find it. I believe that we were looking for a water tank to use as the basin at the dump. Nobody was able to find one. It sitting right there in the Army motor pool. We’ll just grab that one.

I’m driving away with this thing, it’s bouncing all over the place, and I’m thinking in my head, “The smart thing to do would be to ratchet strap this down,” but now I’m starting to sweat. I’ve got to get out of the Army’s area, get back onto Marine Corps area, and then I can secure the load.

As I am driving away, I want to say they were an Army first Sergeant, they charged fully dedicated straight at me, chest out. They go, “What are you doing?”

I said, “Oh, I was sent here by Warrant Officer Penny.”

“Who?!”

“Warrant Officer Penny sent me over to pick this up.”

He said, “ I don’t know a Warrant Officer Penny.”

I said, “Just go talk to S1. They will show you where Warrant Officer Penny is.”

TROY GENT: Were you making this up on the fly?

ERIC PALMER: Yep, right off the fly.

But it worked! That’s the unfortunate part of the miscommunication in the military. If you throw out a rank and a name…

TROY GENT: There are so many damn people over there. Like who knows, right?

ERIC PALMER: If that first Sergeant ever did go to S1 and looked for Warrant Officer Penny, sorry, the guy doesn’t exist. At least I hope he doesn’t. Watch there have been one Warrant Officer Penny.

TROY GENT: Yeah.

ERIC PALMER: I was able to grab this tank. I don’t know where we scavenged the tools from, but we were able to cut this tank down and turn it into a basin. We had the timber.

TROY GENT: Was this a six thousand-gallon tank?

ERIC PALMER: I believe it was a five thousand-gallon tank.

TROY GENT: Did you cut it in half?

ERIC PALMER: Yep. We cut it to about hip level. Because it was just a basin, there were no seats inside. We finally got the entire thing put together on the Air Force pallet and had everything working. Again it was hot water. It wasn’t bubbly. The hoses we used didn’t build up enough pressure to make it a real Jacuzzi.

If nothing else, it was a great moral improvement. When you’re there and you’ve got a mission and you’ve got to get it done, you’ve got to get it done. But if you can just play some stupid games with one another and build up a good camaraderie and relationship during that downtime, it helps you as a unit deal with the high stress.

I was a PFC. This is OAF1. We were at Fob Solomon Islands right after breaking the berm. We were at the very southern end of Iraq. The “war” had just kicked off and I was a stupid private.

There was no time with my unit. When I got out of my MOS school we went into what was called CRC, which by the book is Combat Replacement Company but everyone knows what it really means. It was Casualty Replacement Company and they just sent you where extra bodies were needed.

I was a stupid private and had no idea what was going on. I was with two of my buddies that I was in MOS school with, Billy and Russell The Love Muscle.

TROY GENT: Your unit’s mission was to push up Iraq?

ERIC PALMER: Correct. We were staged.

TROY GENT: You were part of the push.

ERIC PALMER: Yes.

We had gotten word that a three-star is helicoptering in and I had just got promoted a few days prior. I was big. I was bad. I was a PFC. Oh yeah. Now I’ve got some clout and as my first command over Billy and Russell The Love Muscle, who were still privates, was to burn trash to get the camp ready.

TROY GENT: You will have to tell me later why you call him Russell The Love Muscle.

ERIC PALMER: Yeah…

You said there were some words I could use but there are some stories that are better left untold.

TROY GENT: Now that you say that, I can kind of guess -

ERIC PALMER: We pass things around in a unit.

Anyway, we are told that we have to burn all of this garbage. Being a genius PFC in command to these two genius privates we decided that we were going to take three jerry cans of diesel and chuck them in. We built berms that were about fifteen feet tall. It was a twenty by twenty foot burn area. We chuck the ten jerry cans of diesel in because diesel burns long and nice and hot but it doesn’t ignite very quickly. Again, genius.

We thew some aviation fuel, aka MO gas, in there along with the ten jerry cans of diesel. And just like the cartoons, I swear this was my moment of being Wildly Coyote, I get in the center of this twenty by twenty-foot burn area and I have my one jerry can of MO gas.

Now I have fuel all over my jumpsuit in different petroleum products, MO gas included. I start making my dragline from the center and I start walking backwards. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a flame start to follow me. I drop the jerry can as the adrenaline kicks in and I start scrambling on hands and feet up the berm. As I get to the top berm, the flame catches me on the left arm, from the elbow down.

I stop drop and roll down the other side of the berm, which puts sand all up in this fresh wound. I stand up and Billy and Russell The Love Muscle go, “Oh my gosh! Are you ok?!”

At the moment I thought I was. I didn’t feel any pain and was looking at my hand and going, “Oh, it’s a little red but it’s not too bad.”

Well, a couple seconds goes by and red becomes dark red, and dark red becomes mahogany. The pain started to kick in and I couldn’t put enough canteens of water on this wound. The burn pit was outside of the wire. We couldn’t burn inside the wire. I am doing eighty kilometers an hour getting back to Solomon Islands

They had three different guard towers or checkpoints. At the first checkpoint, you had to clear your riffle, the second was where they checked your ID, and the third was the IPOP with the machine gunner. They were the last line of defense.

I pulled up the first one and I quickly cleared my riffle. I pulled up to the second checkpoint where they were checking IDs and I was pulling my ID out as fast as I could.

“I set my arm on fire! I need to go to medical! I need to go to BIS!”

The guy goes, “Well, yeah, but we need to see your ID.”

I was like, “Dude! I set my arm on fire!”

I hear the guy at the IPOP shout down, “He’s gotta clear his riffle again!”

I get up on the hood of the HUMV and using exceedingly colorful language, I say, “I burned my - arm! Let me in!”

They finally do let me in. I get over and there’s a reason my no Marine unit will allow you to punk a Navy Corpsman. Doc is your saving grace when you as a dumb Marine make some stupid decision and they're the ones bailing you out and giving you morphine.

I was in BAS. There was a female doc. We will just leave it there at ‘Female Doc’ and all I remember after they gave me morphine was that I was very flirtatious. Evidently, I was so flirtatious that the Marine Corps Captain who came in to try and get the report of what happened noted that I was being quite insubordinate. And it was this doc who saved me and said, “Hey, he’s on morphine. Some people act really loopy, especially if they are not familiar with or used to painkillers. Come and get the report later.

One thing led to another and there was a short interlude at Camp Solomon Islands. I will just leave the story here. We were in the back of a HUMV ambulance. That is nowhere near as romantic as it sounds. If you’ve seen the back of a HUMV ambulance, it’s three cots in not even twelve feet.

She was lying. I was on top. There was a bar that was right at head level. We will just say that I repeatedly bashed my head. It was nowhere as enjoyable as it could have been if we had been elsewhere.

This is a story that I personally enjoy. Maybe some of my other guys don’t enjoy it as much, but during the OAF1 to OAF2 stay-over, our unit, First BSSG (Brigade Service Support Group), became Second CLB (Combat Logistics Battalion). Really, we were first Mardiv guys that were just holding over to second MarDiv and they wanted nothing to do with us. “Just go out. Man the flight line. Make sure supply is running. We don’t care.”

I believe I can speak for all the boys that I was deployed with. It was the best deployment because nobody messed with us. We were able to do whatever the heck we wanted as long as supply and the flight line were taken care of.

The Marine Corps and the Army have different rules and I am not sure if it is still this way but during OAF One, Two, Three, and Four, an average deployment for the Army was twelve to thirteen months. It was a full-year deployment and they had their R&R time. For the Marine Corps, an average deployment was six months. They would say to us, the holdovers, “You need to take R&R. You’re going to be here for a year plus. Anywhere the Air Force is flying, you can go ahead and puddle jump and go.

I’ve got parents back home. I’ve got friends back home. That’s where I want to go. My mother was German and became a citizen in 1982. My dad was a US Soldier, met her while he was in the Army, and brought a foreign wife home with him.

My mother takes Christmas very seriously. It’s not just a commercial holiday. When you idealize what Christmas is supposed to be, about family, religion, forgiving, and healing, my mother really instilled that value on Christmas in me.

When they asked when we wanted to take R&R, I told them that I wanted to take mine at Christmas. That meant I would be there the longest. Everyone else was going to go on their R&R first. I didn’t care though. I wanted to be home for Christmas.

Every time we sent someone home, they always asked the same question. “What do you want me to send you when I am back stateside?”

The answer was always, “Booze! Send booze!”

Every guy would come back for their holdovers and say, “Dude, I wussed out. They are saying it is illegal to send booze through the postal service so I’m not going to do that.”

It was getting closer to Christmas. The Gunny comes and communicates, “Hey we can’t send you home for Christmas. Intel was saying that there is going to be an increase in tensions in the Sunie Triangle. It’s just not going to happen. You need to pick another time. It has to be sooner.”

I said, “How about Thanksgiving?”

“Ok, yeah. We will make Thanksgiving work.”

I flew home and got to spend Thanksgiving with my family. I asked the same question. “What do you guys want when I am back stateside?”

“I want Gin! I want Whisky! I want Tequila!”

I write it down in my notes.

TROY GENT: So it was illegal to send it in the mail but was it legal for them to have it?

ERIC PALMER: No, so in the country of Iraq it was illegal to consume alcohol. Hashish was legal. For the military, it wasn’t legal to smoke it but alcohol was illegal.

TROY GENT: So booze was illegal for the military personnel just because in Iraq it was illegal.

ERIC PALMER: Yeah, because of the local customs.

TROY GENT: If it wasn’t for the local customs, you could’ve drank.

ERIC PALMER: I can’t speak for command on that but it stands to reason that we should have been able to consume alcohol.

TROY GENT: At least that was the excuse.

ERIC PALMER: Yes.

I get home. We were at the grocery store and I was trying to buy all this stuff. I realize, “How in the heck am I going to send this back?”

And it dawns on me, “Christmas is coming. I am going to send gifts to the troops.”

I then go over to a Target or a Walmart and I start buying as many Nerf guns as I can. One Nerf gun for each one of the guys that was in my unit at the time. We took an exacto knife and cut the seal, opened the box, slid the bottles of booze in the Nerf guns, resealed them, and tried to pack them in so they didn’t break so that they could make the shipment.

I fly back. Obviously, I beat the packages there. The guys were like, “Oh yeah. I’m sure you sent them.”

I was like, “Dudes, I did. I promise they are coming,” and the packages started coming in.

TROY GENT: How many did you send?

ERIC PALMER: It was at least nine bottles of hard liquor, plus the campaign we got from other adventures.

TROY GENT: Okay.

ERIC PALMER: These packages started to roll in, one by one, but my package hadn’t come yet. Lance Corporal Pilkington got his box. Corporal Bishop got his box. Sergeant Elmer got his box. All these boxes are coming in, but my box isn’t coming in.

Gunny gets a call and sends me up to S1. He says, “The Major has a question for you.”

We were holdovers and second MarDiv really doesn’t care about us. Nobody talked to us. Nobody cared. Knowing that the Major wanted me to come up and chat with him, I’m thinking, “What happened?! I’ve been caught.”

I get into his office and he pulls out this Nerf gun and of course, I had bought myself the biggest, baddest Nerf gun. It was this go-cycling machine gun, two-forty golf-style Nerf gun. But he pulls out this box and it is dripping, soaking, and falling apart. It’s in bits and pieces.

He looks at it and says, “Corporal Palmer, what does that smell like to you?”

“It smells like booze, sir.”

“Why are you getting boxes that are saturated in booze?”

“I have no idea, Major. I will have to tell my friends that this is totally unacceptable.”

Eventually, he let me off. I don’t know if I am imagining this or if he actually said it, but either way, it was, “You’ve already been punished. Your bottle of booze has been soaked into a box. It’s leaked everywhere. You’re not going to be able to consume it anyway. That’s a bad enough punishment for you.”

That was around Christmas time. New Year's Eve came up and we were going to have the most epic Nerf war in Iraq. We were at the motor pool acting like idiots and consuming entirely, especially for guys who hadn’t had any alcohol in several months. We got obliterated drunk. It wasn’t even fun drunk anymore. It was obliterated drunk.

It was the heavy equipment motor pool but we took three IOS containers and built a plywood hallway that connected all three. The first one was dispatch, the second one was the rest area, and the third one was tool checkout.

My best friend in the Marine Corps was snipping all of us. He had gone prone on that second level. It was dark and he would just wait for guys to come by as he snipped us with these Nerf guns. We never found him but we finished our Nerf war. We started to get a little belligerent.

When Marines get bored, we get violent with one another typically. It started as harmless wrestling but quickly escalated to full-out fist-to-cuffs. I have never been rocked so hard as I was rocked that night.

I was six feet tall. I was in very good shape at the time. I was more physically imposing than several of the other Marines that were in the area but Sergeant Elmer was this hoppie Native American and was just scrappy, man.

He and my best friend, Joe, got into it and he was putting Joe in his place.

TROY GENT: This was New Year's Eve?

ERIC PALMER: This was all the same night.

TROY GENT: You were drinking. You were obliterated.

ERIC PALMER: Yeah, we were obliterated drunk.

TROY GENT: Okay. So you are just doing crazy stuff.

ERIC PALMER: We were just being idiots.

He’s messing with Joe and I get the gaul to be like, “Nobody’s going to mess with best friend. I’m going to take you out.”

Admittedly, one, I was bigger than him. I think that gave me a bit of false confidence. And two, let’s face it, you always think you’re a whole lot braver when you are on the booze. We go fist to cuffs and think little scrappy, hoppie kicked the living snot out of me. I have never been rocked and nocked out so hard as when that guy took me out.

TROY GENT: He was a Sergeant and you were a Corporal.

ERIC PALMER: Yep.

He ends up passing out drunk on top of the ISO containers. At some point, I lose my boots. I was walking from the motor pool back to the blown-out building that was our barracks. I was barefoot walking back, sliced my foot open from ball to heal, and by the time I got back, I was bleeding all over the place.

The next morning or probably the next afternoon when we finally rolled out of bed. Everyone was fine. There was no drama or dropout. We just realized that dagnabit, you think you are smart when you are on the booze but you realize that you are just a freaking idiot and we ended up beating the living snot out of one another.

In that same blown-out building, the insurgents had been walking in mortar rounds. When I was a kid watching military videos or movies, you had the seasoned Gunnery Sergeant who was walking through the field with explosions and gunfire, like, “Dude!”

TROY GENT: Like in platoon.

ERIC PALMER: Yeah, like, “Dude! That guy has brass balls! How in the hell is he doing that?”

You get over that and you realize how quickly you get desensitized to incoming and you can hear how close incoming really is. You learn to ID that whistle and if it’s a whistle that’s actually going to get close or if it’s a whistle that’s whatever. It’s going to land a mile away. I don’t care.

They walked in from Ramadi. They were trying to walk in these mortar rounds into the munitions bay that was at Al-Taqaddum. As a heavy equipment operator, one of our missions was to clean out all of the Soviet Era munitions that Sadam had stored there at Taqaddum.

They got a lucky rocket fire that got into one of the munitions bays. I am not sure which one, but it got into one of the bays and caused a chain reaction.

TROY GENT: Ah man.

ERIC PALMER: We know that they got into the white phosphorus rounds because it was the most awe-inspiring 4th of July Day firework display as bay after bay just cooked off. Small arms were cooking off. Rockets were blowing up. Small munitions were exploding.

At this same blown-up building, we were sitting on top of the ISO container, luckily sober that time.

TROY GENT: How far away were you?

ERIC PALMER: I honestly can’t recall. It was close enough that you felt the shock waves hit your body but you didn’t feel shrapnel. There was a risk of shrapnel but I don’t recall any shrapnel ever getting anybody.

The second part of the story is, we were in the same blown-out Al-Taqaddum Air Force hanger.

TROY GENT: This is where you sleep.

ERIC PALMER: Correct. We converted the hanger into a barracks. We put up plywood walls and set up our racks. My rackmate at the time was Joe Bishop. He was on the bottom. I was on the top.

We were both on the graveyard shift at that time. It was in the middle of the day and we were both sleeping. Again, you can sleep through incoming. I still sleep through loud noises and it doesn’t bother me.

Our command required us to have the sling wrapped around our leg so that no one could steal our riffle and we didn’t sleep in kavlers but we did sleep in our flack jackets.

Someone grabs me off the top bunk from my flack jacket and flings me off this rack.

“Get your uniform on! Get your kevlar on! Incoming! Incoming! Incoming!”

I was totally dazed and out of it. I have no idea what is going on. I am stumbling out. My rifle is on the ground, tied to my ankle. It was the most unprofessional sight you could have ever seen. I felt like Mr. Bean in a Marine Corps uniform.

We do get out the back end of the bay and we find out that not five meters from where I was sleeping, one of those mortars had landed and gone dud, Well within the blast range and I tell people I should not be here.

There’s that old quote, “You’ll never find an atheist in a foxhole.”

Man, when you realize that you were absolutely within the death range of a mortar and that mortar went dud -

TROY GENT: Did it land just outside?

ERIC PALMER: Right outside. Heavy equipment was the very first on the right. If that would have gone off, I would have gone to sleep and never woke up.

TROY GENT: How big were those mortars that they were firing?

ERIC PALMER: I don’t recall. When I was preparing for this and chatting with some of the guys, I realized that I wish I had kept a journal. For anybody listening to this podcast, kid you not, whether you are a first responder, military, or whatever it is that you are doing in your life, you think in the moment that you will never forget.

How could I forget the size of a munition that darn near killed me? Why would I forget a small detail like that? You do. You get on with your life, certain memories pop into your brain and new memories go in.

I invite you the listener to start journaling, even if it is just a couple of sentences. The future you is going to thank you for it. Your children possibly will thank you for it. I only tell my children certain stories about my deployments.

TROY GENT: You don’t tell them about the ambulance?

ERIC PALMER: No. We don’t talk about doc. Nope. We are going to keep that story under wraps.

As they get older, I may be willing to share other stories but just for your own edification if not for your children, grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren. Do it for yourself.

Each one of those deployments changed me. I chatted with some of my boys. We try to meet up
every couple of years. I said, “Dude, I just want to bring a microphone out and as we sit around drinking a beer and telling our stories to one another, I want that recorded for each one of us so that as we continue to get older we can reminisce.

TROY GENT: I probably have eight full-sized journals just from four years as an officer. I just started tapping into the letters that I wrote my wife in OCS and I came across three stories that I laughed all day about.

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ERIC PALMER: My best friend in boot camp was Recruit Miller. Recruit Miller was a wonderful guy but he was the Marine in the unit that caused all the drama for everybody else. He wasn’t fast enough. His rack wasn’t tight enough. And when I was his squad leader, I was getting my ass smoked because of freaking Miller.

His LBV (Low Bearing Vest) was not laid out in the proper way and I watched as Staff Sergeant Phelps, who was my favorite of the DIs, like a gizel leap by strides from one end of the bay to the other. I was thinking, “Oh crap. I am going to get smoked because of Miller.”

I don’t know what came over me. I don’t know if it was defensive, paternal, or stupid. It was probably stupid but I locked my arm out and close lined to protect Miller from first hat. Now, I would like to say that it was this epic moment where Staff Sergeant Phelps got close-lined,

landed on his back, and looked up with respect in his eyes knowing that I was becoming a Marine and defending men in my unit. I would like to say that. That’s not what happened.

What happened was I got decked right in the gut and killed over, we both got smoked, and I lost my squad leadership. There went PFC. Thanks, Miller. Thanks for doing that to me dude. If I ever see you again.

Did you ever do Deck Towel Five-Hundred?

TROY GENT: Was that where you bear-crawled while you pushed the towel?

ERIC PALMER: Yep.

TROY GENT: We never did that but my senior drill instructor made someone do it for like an hour after lights out. It’s horrible.

ERIC PALMER: It smokes you. For those of you who have never had the joy or the distinct pleasure of Deck Towel Five-Hundred, imagine taking a towel that is just a little bit larger than an average hand towel that you would find in your kitchen, having soapy, sudsy water thrown onto a linoleum or tile floor, and then getting into a bear crawl. You’re on your hands and feet. The towel is under your two hands in front of you and bear crawling using this soapy, sudsy towel to give you some level of less resistance so that you can run around.

We would run around the entire interior of this recruit bay. For us, our entire platoon would do it and the way you were done being smoked was if you were first.

TROY GENT: So every lap someone was first.

ERIC PALMER: Correct. Every lap, one guy would come out and we had ninety-two guys.

TROY GENT: And it was a race.

ERIC PALMER: Yeah.

TROY GENT: So you are fighting each other.

ERIC PALMER: Exactly.

TROY GENT: Okay.

ERIC PALMER: We were kicking and knocking each other over.

To this very day, even talking about him now, I can feel the anger in my belly. He did his job right. As a bulldog, your job is to make the life of the recruits a living hell. He made my life a living hell and I still swear to this day that if I see that man in a dark ally, I will take the assault charge. I am punching that guy in the chin.

The worst thing in my brain that he did and that left a last impression on me was on one of these deck towels. I had won and he goes, “Nope, get back in there, Palmer.”

I think I had three victories, three times I should have been pulled out. He wouldn’t let me.

I thought, “Screw this. I am going to outthink this freaking drill instructor. He can’t continue to have me do this if I am bleeding.”

I was looking at the tile wall that was partitioning the main bay from where the head and shower units were. I Deck Towel Five-Hundred as fast as I can, flat side of my head down, and ‘BAM!” I full speed right into this tile wall. I laid myself out and started to bleed.

He comes up to me, grabs me by the collar, and goes, “What did you do?!”

I go, “I’m done deck toweling, sir,” and I got out of it.

TROY GENT: Share with us one or two of your most difficult stories. And if you’ve had any experience with post-traumatic stress or mental health challenges, tell us how you manage them or or overcame them.

ERIC PALMER: I think this is one thing that a lot of first responders and combat military veterans can sympathize with. When you get a firm and visceral grasp of your own mortality, I believe that it changes you on a fundamental level. Whether it changes you positively or negatively depends on how you react to the change.

This is something my dad said and I am sorry Dad. I am going to slaughter this but when I left for my first deployment he pulled me aside and said, “You grow up and you watch Rambo and all these other movies. You always see that the atrocity happens to the other guy. It never happens to the hero in the movie. When you are over there, to the guy next to you, you are the other guy.

You play war as a kid. You play Army as a kid. You play soldier as a kid. You go, “Oh! I got shot by the Nerf gun. Oo, I’m dead,” but it’s not real because you just respawn. You pick up your Nerf gun and you get back to it. My father was trying to instill that you do your duty. You take care of the guy and the gal next to the left and the right of you but never forget that you are the other guy.

The scariest moment that I had out of all of my four deployments was back again at Solomon Islands. I was a PFC and stupid as the day is long. We were coming through the berm. There was still a large concern about dirty skuds. We knew that Sedam had used chemical weapons against the Kurds.

I don’t know how many safety Standdowns we went through. When we were back in CONUS getting ready to deploy, we were doing butes and utes MOP level five runs in Southern California in the middle of the summer. It sucked. We were sweating balls but “we knew” that Sadam was going to use dirty bombs against us.

We were over in Solomon Islands, the alarm came over for incoming, and you could see the exhaust. All of us were reaching down and getting down into MOP level. The unit I was with at the time, we were all well-versed. We went into our bunkers that wouldn’t even protect you from a personal grenade but it was the illusion of protection.

As I was dawning and clearing my gas mask, I had knocked it off with my chin the little hose that was connected on the inside so that I could actually hook up to my canteen and drink. I got down into the little plywood bunker, we were sitting there, and it’s the waiting that kills you. When rounds are actually coming down range in a convoy, there is something going on. Your brain has something to concentrate on but just sitting there and waiting for the inevitable, for me was the hardest.

I am sure that when I die and I get to go back and relive my life or watch it as a movie, I am going to go back to this moment and I am going to realize that I was only sitting in that bunker for an hour or less but in my brain at the moment I was there for hours. All I could think was, “I am going to die. I am not going to die a hero. I’m not going to die in combat. I am not going to die from incoming. I‘m not going to die from small arms fire. I am going to die of dehydration because I am a jackass and knocked the hose off.”

Every minute to me was then feeling like ten minutes and it’s just drawing on and on and on. I note that nobody else was talking. Everyone was just sitting there looking at each other in stunned silence waiting to hear what we needed to do next.

However long it was, whether it was an hour or however long I felt it was, I started to get exceedingly dizzy and I wasn’t able to concentrate. It could be that part of that was just adrenalin and boredom, but in my brain at the moment, I was dying of dehydration. I was having this internal battle with myself of whether or not I should break my seal. If there is a chemical or biological agent in the area and you break your seal, what we were taught was that you were as good as dead.

I make this judgment to break my seal with just two fingers, my thumb and index finger on my left hand. I reached up in there because at that point I had figured out that my hose was down there, I connected it, and dawned and cleared all over again.

The most frightened I have ever been in my life was the preceding three to five minutes. You know when you are so cognizant and aware? You think you are making stuff up in your own head, like, “Does that really hurt? Is my muscle really twitching? Ah! What’s going on?!”

I felt every little thing that was going on with me and like I was going to die. Nothing happened and we found out later that there were no dirty skuds. There was incoming, but nothing that got close to Solomon Islands. It was all in my head but the visceral fear I felt changed me and I do believe, in most ways, for the better.

You met me outside of the military within a business organization. People say that I am flamboyant, neurotic, energetic, cookie, that I have these high vibrations, etc. I don’t disagree with them and don’t feel embarrassed about that because it stilled me and gave me the confidence to not care about the little embarrassments in life. The only things that bothered me were, “Who I didn’t didn’t not express my affection to? Who did I not tell that I loved that I should have told? What had I not done because I felt fear? What did I neglect in my life? What adventures did I not go on because I had to be cool?”

Those were the thoughts that went through my head. In that way, it was a blessing in fearing for my life because it showed me at a young age how inconsequential those things really are.”

TROY GENT: Just to reference your energy because I get to see your fun energy on a regular basis in those networking groups. It’s just, “You know what, I’ve got one life to live, this is who I am, I am going to be proud of who I am,” and I feel the same way. There is nothing to be embarrassed about. I am outside the box too, as you know.

ERIC PALMER: Yep.

TROY GENT: Did you ever struggle with any sort of mental health challenges?

ERIC PALMER: Yes, but I want to say that there are boys in my unit who absolutely had it harder than I did. I think there are a lot of variables that go into trauma. What were you exposed to and what tool sets did you have going into that situation? I praise my father for instilling a stoic-esc personality before I got there. I think that helped fortify me in a way to better defend against mental traumas.

My wife didn’t know me while I was in the military nor immediately after. It was almost a decade later that she met me and she doesn’t have a lot of military exposure in her family. There was a different mentality, a different lifestyle, and it just took a little bit of jelling but bless her heart. She does the very best that she can do and she is so patient and considerate when I do have episodes. I don’t feel like I need to go and apologize.

I have talked to combat vets who have said that’s one thing that unfortunately causes turmoil in marriages is when they feel like they have to apologize. If you do something jacked up, yes, apologize for that. But a physiological response to trauma, there is nothing you need to apologize for there.

On the functionality side, this is my invitation. I am not a classically trained therapist. I am not a psychiatrist. I have no certificate and no training. Take my opinion for the exact two cents after inflation that it’s worth but for me, reading The Stoics really gave me the functional tools to help me when I felt and when I feel episodes.

The two specifically that I recommend are Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius is a little more well-known because he was a Roman emperor. More people know his name and his works. It’s not The Diary of Marcus Aurelius but it basically is a diary. It’s his private thoughts that he has written down about what it is to be a moral man.

The overarching theme of The Stoics is, “Control the things that you can control and don’t get tied up in the things you can’t.”

I cannot control an instant physiological response, like when a car backfires or a firework goes off and I immediately go back. What I do have control over is the next is the very next ten seconds. How do I respond? How do I act? How do I react?

If you haven’t read any Stoics, Marcus Aurelius is far more approachable, in my opinion, because he is not writing to convince anyone. These are his own private thoughts that he is writing in his own journal that has now been published. Some people say that it is a little harder to read because it is very disjointed. It would be like someone reading your journal but Marcus Aurelius was very poetic.

If you’ve ever read The Art of War by Sun Tzu, it’s like different little quotes. They don’t really tie into one another but you can read it page to page. That’s kind of what Marcus Aurelious’s read is.

Then there is Epictetus. He as a philosopher, tried to teach the Stoic mentality to a student through his works. It’s a little bit more technical and a little more nuts and boltsy. Some people say that it is a harder read but in my opinion and for me personally, I have gleaned functional tools that have helped me cope and deal with things in a healthy and non-disassociative way.

The Stoics do not purport or invite you to disassociate. That’s not a healthy coping mechanism. That is most likely going to rear its head in ugly ways.

TROY GENT: Yeah, if you’re not facing it, eventually it is going to backfire.

ERIC PALMER: Correct.

Another Stoic was Seneca. I’m not superbly familiar. I’ve only read parts of Seneca's works. For those of you who have read Seneca, I am going to slaughter this paraphrase, but it’s, “Concern yourself with only what is in front of you, not with what you fear is going to fear is going to be in the future for you.

TROY GENT: I learned a recent term. It’s called future tripping. It’s like it is a drug. You are just tripping on the future all of the time.

ERIC PALMER: Yeah, that is basically what Seneca was getting at. So much of the heartache that we endure is heartache that we don’t even need to. We are worrying about things that aren’t even real. I was worried about a dirty bomb and it was a life-changing event because I was going to die. I made a life and death choice to break my seal and that affected me but it was all figazi. It didn’t exist.

That’s my invitation. If you want to audible it, you can get it free on YouTube. There are some gems in there that have really helped me cope in a healthy way with PTSD events.

TROY GENT: I love it, Eric. I have two quick questions before we end here. Your arm doesn’t have any evidence of burn on it.

ERIC PALMER: Correct. It never got to third degree.

TROY GENT: Okay.

ERIC PALMER: A third-degree burn will do permanent nerve subdermal damage. It’s permanent damage. Mine was a severe second-degree burn. They say that the second degree is the most painful but when you got on 10CCs of morphine, you don’t really feel a whole lot anymore.

TROY GENT: What did you do with the hot tub?

ERIC PALMER: The hot tub was left behind. When the deployments were swapping back and forth, we would leave most of the stuff that you acquired. You would try to sell it but the incoming unit knew that you weren’t taking it with you.

TROY GENT: Did you tell the incoming replacements that there was a hot tub?

ERIC PALMER: Yeah. I don’t know if this is true but what I was told is that the unit that replaced us didn’t think it was a good idea to have a hot tub so they disassembled it.

You have no idea what you’ve done, what kind of work that went into that, what kind of lies were told to some innocent first Sergeant in the Army. We almost came fist to cuff when we stole the hydraulic hoses from motor T so there was conflict there. There were lies. There were cover-ups. There were hiding things incognito in ISO containers. There was planning, dagnabit, and they just disassembled it.

TROY GENT: Well thanks so much Eric for coming on. I really appreciate it. It means a lot and I look forward to your continued friendship.

ERIC PALMER: I appreciate the time.

OUTRO: Thank you for listening.

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