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Kevin Greene joined the Marine Corps in 2005 in the delayed entry program but went to boot camp in 2006 to go to war. In four short years, Kevin did two combat deployments to Iraq and one combat deployment to Afghanistan, where he volunteered to cross over to a different battalion to help boost their numbers.
After four selfless years in the Marine Corps Infantry, he was honorably discharged. He later got a college degree and now works for the Veterans Administration.
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.
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Creators & Guests
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: Kevin Greene joined the Marine Corps in 2005 in the delayed entry program but went to boot camp in 2006 to go to war. In four short years, Kevin did two combat deployments to Iraq and one combat deployment to Afghanistan, where he volunteered to cross over to a different battalion to help boost their numbers.
After four selfless years in the Marine Corps Infantry, he was honorably discharged. He later got a college degree and now works for the Veterans Administration.
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: Welcome, Kevin. Thanks for joining me on the Ghost Turd Stories podcast. Tell us when you joined the Marine Corps, why, and any funny stories about boot camp you remember.
KEVIN GREENE: I joined in 2005 for the delayed entry but went in in 2006. I was kind of effing off and so I was like, “Am I going to college? No, I don’t have the grades. I don’t have the money and I am not going to get in debt for that.”
I had always liked the hype of the war. It was something I could see myself doing. I ended up going in the summer of 2006. It was July 10th. Boot camp was pretty fun. We had some pretty crazy DIs. They were all seasoned. So some of them were pretty intimidating.
We had one that ended up hurting himself by a pulling ligament or a tendon and he had this pin in the middle finger of his knife hand. If you ever got in trouble he would come up and get in your face but he used it like a weapon.
I remember one time when he came up to me all pissed and he was poking it in my neck. You have to keep your composure. I never wanted to be the guy who was caught in the cross fires and here he was, stabbing me in the neck.
We had a guy who ended up peeing himself because he didn’t ask in time and the DI looked at us as if we were his kids. Like, “Ugh, come on guys. You’ve got to just ask. What are you doing here? Who’s got to go to the head?”
There were probably eighty when we first dropped in. It was a huge class.
TROY GENT: Explain what it was like to use the head with so many recruits in a hurry with only a few toilets.
KEVIN GREENE: That was definitely something I had to get used to. It was funny in the beginning. They would yell, “Attack the head!” and then start counting you down. You would have six dudes to a urinal just trying to get as much urine out as they could as they are getting screamed at. God forbid you have to go number two because you're in there really quick. We would wipe with no stall doors as we were looking at each other. It just becomes hectic.
There was a time that we disrespected the drill instructor at chow in front of another drill instructor. It was something ridiculous. It was like we got goofing around and it wasn’t even me per se. It was like the first two squads out. They were goofing off and a DI corrected them.
I come out and I am thinking, “What’s going on?”
Everyone is locked up extra hard. Clearly one is on the move. It had happened before I came out. He goes, “Alright, you guys want to disrespect me?”
I am representing him. That is how it is in The Corps, especially in the infantry. He was disrespected. I didn’t witness the disrespect, but as a platoon we did.
We get back to the barracks and it’s Two Sheets And A Blanket. We were just getting destroyed.
TROY GENT: Explain what two sheets and a blanket is.
KEVIN GREENE: Alright. So Two Sheets And A Blanket is just a game for messing up. It’s just remaking your bed. Our beds consisted of two white sheets, a green blanket, and a pillow. That is it. You would put down one sheet one way, put another sheet the other way, you would have the green blanket tucked in all nice, and you make it perfect.
Anyways, they would make you rip your blankets apart and then hold them online. When you’re online, you were at the edge of your foot locker and holding up your stuff. Then they would instruct you to make them again and count down.
Sometimes they would do this with overturned footlockers and we would have to restack our footlockers and this could go on for twenty minutes to an hour. Sometimes the task would be impossible, but such is life. They were getting us ready for it.
For me, boot camp in parts is a little hazy just because I ended up splitting up with some of those dudes when I went to SOI. That was many moons ago and there was so much booze in between then and now.
I graduated October 10th, 2006. I sat around because we ended up having two months. I picked up in January and going to 1/7. I went to Charley Company. Little did I know how awesome that was because it was Chesty Puller's little battalion during Guadalcanal and a Basilone for Suicide Charley. There were two guideons that we were proud about.
I ended up going to second platoon with six other guys from SOI. One of them happened to be Dylan, who you know. Me and him actually kind of hated each other in SOI but then we were in the same team. I was an aid gunner for him being the SAW gunner. We ended up becoming really close. We had to learn how to navigate being boots.
There was a saying that I heard once. It was, “ Better you than I and better I than you,” because at the end of the day, it’s the mission. If someone goes down, so be it. This is what we live for. If it’s me, it’s me. If it’s you, it’s you. Whatever. We are going to move on with you in mind.
That was the beauty of that job. You aren’t going to find any higher competition than hunting or being hunted.
TROY GENT: What's the dumbest mistake you made in combat?
KEVIN GREENE: I was more like a candlelight. I’d fuckin’ take hands if needed. If I deserve an ass-wooping, I’m ok with that.
I remember on my first deployment, my post was not as significant as watching a whole sector but I was watching trucks. We were living with the Hajis amongst us. We would watch our trucks because they would try and steal our shit.
I was a dumb boot and I had like the perfect position for my flack. I had propped it up and was standing. I didn’t even realize that I had dozed off and it wasn’t even my sensior. It was some other senior.
I was expecting to get the hands but no. I ended up having to stand full gear with my SAW at attention with the weapon across me. I could see the disappointment in their eyes. That was probably the hardest thing because I let them down. I wasn’t watching a full sector but in rolls a new squad and they were like “Wake up!”
I ended up getting in a fight with that senior Marine. He was talking shit about my sister and I wanted to throw hands about it. Because I tried to fight, they were thinking I had animosity and put me in a different squad. The funny thing is me and him still talk.
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KEVIN GREENE: On my first deployment, we were in the city of Hit and it’s like huge. There are a lot of people. It’s west of Ramadi.
We used to see weddings all the time and they would just unload an absurd amount of rounds into the sky. They would love it.
Anyways, I digress. We rolled up to this intersection and there was a wedding. They were all pumped and they must have dropped like a thousand rounds for the celebration which was the craziest thing I saw up until this next thing I saw.
We used to see things all the time that we were crazy, but by far, was seeing a midget in a moped get hit by a car. I kid you not. There must be a thousand people and maybe fifty vehicles moving. It was a huge intersection. We used to make them all stop because we were afraid of VBIEDs. That was a standard operating procedure.
Some of these places, they can’t really stop right away. We wouldn’t shoot directly right away. We’d give warning shots and pin flares. We’d wait. There was a whole escalation of force. I digress.
One car was looking at us. He’s looking at us on the moped trying to evade and stop at the same time He cuts left and the car doesn’t see him. He keeps going and flies onto the hood. He hits the windshield, comes off, and dusts himself off. He picks up his moped and they are both kind of shouting at each other.
We were just dying. Oh my God, I was close to tears and had to drive. I was trying to avoid IEDs and people. Oh my God, it was so funny.
One guy we used to pass, he was like a dog. They would treat him like a dog. It was weird. He would bark at us and was chained up outside. It was a little bit weird. We’d be like, “Yeah, that’s dog man over there.
There was some intense stuff but that comes with living in a war zone. There was a lot of power grab. They lynched a couple of IPs. We found them being dragged behind.
They would catch a couple of them at checkpoints. There were a lot of family feuds and wars. A lot of people don’t understand the Sunni and the Shiite. It goes deep. It’s insane how much it divulged over there.
Minus that crazy stuff, there were always little lulls and funny things. We would run snap VCPs (vehicle checkpoints) out in the desert and you’d find a couple of cars speeding and hauling ass because they have a who network of highways out in the desert.
We rolled up on one to check it out. Nothing was wrong. The dude had like an AK and some goats in the back. We looked in the trunk and there was a body rolled up. We were like, “What? Sir, what is this? Why do you have a rolled-up body?”
He responded with, “Oh that’s my dead relative.”
He was going to a funeral. We were like, “Why is he in the trunk? You could have put the goats back here and left the truck open but instead, you have goats pooping in the back seat.”
My mind was blown because the truck wasn’t even closed. We both were shook. Like, “Here is your AK47 back. Dude, have a good night. Safe travels.”
It was the most shocking thing because he had the goats in the back seat instead of his dead relative.
TROY GENT: What was your second deployment like?
KEVIN GREENE: It was a mixed bag because we weren’t doing patrols. We did maybe two patrols. I was team lead for two patrols I took the section one time, but for the most part, we weren’t doing much besides being QRF, working out, and at an OP in Carnel. We weren’t even allowed to leave the wire.
We were working out a ridiculous amount. It was awesome in that regard. We had AC. We had showers. The whole experience was night and day. On the first deployment, we were living in filth and not showering for like sixty days. They ended up blowing up the bridge on us and we were cut off from friendly lines.
By 2009, I wanted to go to Afghanistan. That was where everything was cracking because we had 27, which was one of our sister units, that needed casualty replacements. They ended up calling some of our seniors and we tried to go. We ended up losing one of our seniors and I was like, “If I get the opportunity, I am going.”
I was about to reenlist on a second deployment. Life was crazy on the second deployment with the way the Marine Corps was shifting toward Afghanistan and 3-4 was low on people and I was like, “Sign me up!”
TROY GENT: Why did you join the Marines and why did you want to go to Afghanistan?
KEVIN GREENE: I have always loved military history and that was one of the reasons I joined the Marine Corps. The area we were in is like ancient. They defeated so many people including the Russians and even Alexander the Great. We were right next to a tall rocky outcrop and the locals would call it three kings. That is Orion’s belt and it sucks that they are all war-torn because it’s such a beautiful environment.
TROY GENT: Did you have to extend to finish your deployment with 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines? How was your transition from the Marines to becoming a civilian? And what challenges have you had with post-traumatic stress?
KEVIN GREENE: I went to my EAS date and I was out in July of 2010. We were home for sixty-three days in between.
It was crazy. I was on an OP and I actually had a red cross. My mom had a stroke. She didn’t die but she was in the ICU and really close to the edge. I was home in the States within four days, I think.
It was such a blur because when you are traveling by yourself, you don’t have an alarm clock. I ended up going back through Kuwait and it was dead. No one was there. I stayed up all night making sure I didn’t miss my check-in for my flight.
I ended up getting home and hitting the ground running. I was drunk as shit. There was zero decompression. It was pretty nuts how that all transpired because you have to sign out to get out of the Marine Corps and that became an issue in itself.
I got out on weird shitty terms. I didn’t even want to look back. I was at home partying. It was ridiculous. It was a pretty weird transition. I started doing dumb stuff. I was drinking and doing drugs. I was more or less chasing the dragon of excitement.
I’ve realized that you can’t be kicking the can down the road, as a lack of better terms. You’ve got to address it and I’m on my little road to addressing it. Marines are good at not allowing negative reinforcement to enter their brain and what I mean by that is, say that you are told that you are bad at math as a young kid. If you are told that over and over again, you might assume that you are bad at math and not continue to try it.
Marines are great at this. We will always be like, “What do I need to do to get the job done? Negative thought? Submit that.”
We can’t let it resonate but the thing is if you aren’t putting out the fire, it’s going to grow. No matter how you are doing it. One day you may not have the discipline and doing drugs or booze totally takes away your inhabition. I don’t know if it was my body telling me I should be drinking as much as I was or if it was having kids and realizing that I didn’t want to be that guy. It becomes evident and you’ve got to look in the mirror because every day is earned.
I started to look at definitions. Would I say I am paranoid? No. But am I paranoid by definition? I probably am. That is what you need to be looking at, especially if you have done crazy things. I am coming to terms with the fact that the way I think is probably not natural. That is ok. The thing that I’ve learned to cope with is that it may be a me problem. It might not be my spouse or a dude that looked at me sideways. Granted, there are a lot of societal decay issues but at the end of the day, the anger and irritability stems from somewhere. You got to address it.
TROY GENT: What do you do now for the veterans administration?
KEVIN GREENE: I work for a biomedical engineering company. My degree is in business management so I want to go to the admin side and I actually had to shoot for a lower position buying stuff all day for biomedical engineering.
My department will fix the pumps that you see in the hospital. I work for the engineers that make sure that the heart monitoring systems, dialysis machines, and feeding pumps stay up. I also do all the paperwork, time cards, and order purchasing. I honestly love it cause I am doing it for me.
I’ve got some good stories. I’m sure that Dylan has told you some. Me and him had some good times together. I still keep up with Dylan. That’s the goal is to stay in contact and to keep on living for those who are no longer here.
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.