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After twenty-three years in the Marine Corps working as an Infantryman, a career planner, and a Recruiter, Matt Spencer retired as a Master sergeant.
To learn more about Isagenix, visit nmp.isagenix.com.
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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.
PODCAST INTRODUCTION: Hello everyone and welcome to Ghost Turd Stories.
I'm your host Troy Gent.
Ghost Turd Stories mission is using humorous and challenging stories from veterans and first responders to reduce the burden of families whose veteran or first responder took their own life.
Ghost Turd Stories vision is to use humorous and challenging stories to prevent suicide within our ranks and reduce the burden of families whose veteran or first responder took their own life.
We hope to attract veterans and first responders as well as those interested in knowing more about what it's like to be in our shoes while we wear or wore those shoes.
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Our podcast is the face of our company but we want every family who cares to know about the experiences their veteran and or first responder went through for them.
We interview veterans and first responders, collect pictures, write their stories, and compile them in a book for their families and friends to enjoy.
Oftentimes, it's difficult for us to talk to our loved ones about what we did, saw, and heard while serving.
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TROY GENT: Alright, welcome everybody to Ghost Turd Stories.
My guest tonight is Matt Spencer.
I served with him for about two years in the third battalion, seventh Marines but he spent twenty-three years in the Marine Corps and retired.
Welcome Matt.
MATT SPENCER: Thanks, Troy.
Yeah, so tell us, Matt, where you served, when you joined when you got out, and uh, that kind of thing, and who you served with.
Yeah, I started in 1992, started off in the reserves, and loved it so much that I tried to go active duty.
I walked into the recruiting office, again, a second time, and the recruiter was a career recruiter.
So those guys are shady.
He was like, "If you want to go on active duty, you need to prove yourself to the Marine Corps and become a recruiter first."
So they had me working in the summer.
I got promoted to corporal very quickly because of that.
I got the recruiting points.
And then I was like, "Hey, I need to do this full-time."
So I basically ended up recruiting myself onto active duty.
At the time they were looking for counter-intel people and I was like, "Yeah, that sounds pretty cool."
At the time I was a sergeant and they were like, "Well if you do that, we'll start you off as Lance Corporal."
I'm like, "I'm not going to go from Sergeant down to Lance Corporal again.
That's not happening."
"Well, if you stay 03, we'll just take away a year and a half time in grade and then you'll be starting off as a Sergeant again.
TROY GENT: So they can do that?
They can demote you if you don't get in trouble?
MATT SPENCER: Yeah, because I had no MOS.
The way they classified it, “No MOS credibility.”
So they wouldn't take a Sergeant but they would take a Lance Corporal because they would have to send me to school all over again.
That's why I stayed in the infantry.
TROY GENT: So you went from Lance Corporal to Sergeant in recruiting duty?
MATT SPENCER: Yeah.
TROY GENT: Okay.
MATT SPENCER: Yeah, after I made the decision to stay 0311, I was like like, "Okay, I want to go to Camp Pendleton."
And the 0311 monitor was like, "Well, we can send you to the West Coast but it'll be close to Pendleton.
I was like, "Alright, fine."
So he sent me in the middle of 29 palms and that's where I met you.
TROY GENT: Just so everybody knows, me and Chris Coates, who I've already interviewed on this podcast, and Matt were the only Mormon boys in I think the company.
MATT SPENCER: We had one other.
I forget his name though.
TROY GENT: I'm sorry to interrupt.
Go ahead.
MATT SPENCER: Yeah, so after that, after three-seven, you're doing those long hikes, twenty-five miles, out in the middle of the desert, dealing with the heat, dealing with Okinawa and the jungle.
I was like, "Alright, I'm tired of this."
I actually contemplated about going back on recruiting duty, which was crazy.
TROY GENT: Because recruiting duty is pretty brutal, right?
MATT SPENCER: Oh, it is.
It's a career ender for a lot of people and it's not the Marine Corps.
It really isn't.
So then at the time in 2000 and 2001, the career planner that we had was having a hard time meeting his retention goals and the battalion commander came up to me in Okinawa.
I was on duty that night.
And he was like, "Hey, what's your history?"
I told him I had been on recruiting duty.
He said, "You know what?
I might need your help.
I need you in the career planner's office."
I said, "Okay."
So I started working with the career planner and started helping him out.
And I was like, "Hey, this is not recruiting duty but it's probably the next best thing as far as staying in the actual Marine Corps and...
TROY GENT: Getting out of 03.
MATT SPENCER: Getting out of 03.
Yeah, I lat moved into career planning.
I was transitioning from a B Billet to an actual MOS.
I made a name for myself.
A lot of high people noticed the work I was doing and they actually planned my career when I was in Iraq.
Didn't even know these people.
They just knew my name.
I was the first career planner to go to Iraq after convincing my new commander to take me.
When they told me they were going, they were like, "We're probably going to leave you behind."
I'm like, "Why would you do that?"
It was an air wing unit.
I was the only 0311 in the unit or who had grunt experience.
You guys are going to war and you're not going to take your prior 0311 guy?
That doesn't make sense.
So they were like, "Yeah, you got a good point.
Yeah, you could teach us some stuff."
So they made me the platoon sergeant.
TROY GENT: So you were going to teach them a little infantry stuff?
MATT SPENCER: Yeah, they actually took some fire.
Yeah, I just did squad rushes and, "I'm up.
I'm down.
They see me.
Bang, bang, bang.”
I was the only career planner within our camp.
It was Camp Ryan at the time.
We actually had to set the camp up.
We set up the tents.
We were the first unit there and then the other units joined us like a couple weeks later.
It was Task Force Tarawa.
There were a total of like five units there.
I was the only career planner and I was pretty busy.
At the time, they were giving out tons of bonuses because it was a combat zone.
After that, I got promoted to Staff Sergeant, moved up to the Marine Air Control Group, and went on a second deployment to Iraq.
They were like, "Hey, yeah.
We're going to keep you here after your seven months because we see no reason for you to go back."
I'm like, "Well, here's the thing.
You've got a Sergeant who wants to come and replace me.
She hasn't been to the combat zone.
She's trying to get promoted.
You're not giving her the opportunity to show what she can do.
So, my executive officer lieutenant colonel said, "You should probably call your monitor."
I called the monitor, I had orders within a week, and that's when they sent me to Marine Corps Air Station Miramar.
As a newly promoted gunny, they had me in charge of the entire 3rd Marine Air Wing.
There was a guy over me, he was a master sergeant, but like I said, I was making a name for myself and there were people I didn't know who were planning my career.
I requested to go to Yuma, which is a small base in Arizona.
They were like, "We have other plans for you.
We're going to send you to Marine Corps air station Marimar as a newly promoted gunny because the Master Sergeant that's there is...
Let's just say he needs some guidance.
I'm like, you, you're basically, you're telling me you want me in charge of the master Sergeant.
They're like, "Yes."
TROY GENT: So this is still a pretty new MOS.
MATT SPENCER: It is, yeah.
And yeah, they didn't have any faith in this guy.
TROY GENT: So they probably threw that Master Sergeant in a thing that he was like, "What am I doing here?"
MATT SPENCER: He was on recruiting duty too and I think that's what helped him get into the MOS.
They were all looking for prior recruiters.
So I spent a year and a half there at Marimar and then I finally made it to Camp Pendleton in 2007.
So about ten years after I requested to go to Pendleton, I finally made it there.
And then after that, from Camp Pendleton I went to Okinawa.
I spent two years there, went back to Pendleton, and retired out of Marine Corps Installations West in 2015 after twenty-three years.
TROY GENT: So you deployed to Iraq twice?
MATT SPENCER: Yep.
TROY GENT: Okay and Okinawa once.
So you did three deployments?
MATT SPENCER: Okinawa was a permanent station.
TROY GENT: That's right.
You did it twice.
MATT SPENCER: We did the two deployments with three-seven, the UDP deployments.
TROY GENT: Were you in both of those?
MATT SPENCER: Yep.
TROY GENT: Oh, I'm sorry.
Yeah, you were.
MATT SPENCER: Yeah because the first time we were in the India company together and then the second time I was in the company office and you were in S3.
TROY GENT: That's right.
As far as memorable, funny things that happened, what are some of the things that you can remember?
MATT SPENCER: You know, most of the stuff I remember that was funny happened in the infantry. but a recruiting story popped in my mind today.
We had this, older girl that wanted to join.
She was twenty-seven at the time.
Boot camp was thirteen weeks at the time.
She made it through eleven weeks of boot camp and she couldn't help herself.
She wrote a love letter to her drill instructor.
I actually went to high school with her drill instructor.
TROY GENT: Oh man.
He didn't he didn't know this was gonna happen?
MATT SPENCER: She didn't know.
She didn't know it was going to happen and eleven weeks in, she was like, "Staff sergeant drill instructor so and so, I think you're so beautiful and I'm in love with you."
So two weeks before graduation they sent her home and I'm like, "Oh no!
What are you?
You couldn't wait two more weeks?”
TROY GENT: Yeah.
Would he have reciprocated that?
MATT SPENCER: No, this was the 90s so Bill Clinton had instilled the the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.
But you know after somebody says, "I'm in love with you..."
TROY GENT: Oh my gosh.
I didn't connect that.
It was a female on a female.
MATT SPENCER: Yeah, it was a female.
TROY GENT: Okay.
MATT SPENCER: Yeah, telling her drill instructor she was in love with her.
As soon as that happened they had to kick her out.
TROY GENT: I never got a full story on that.
If you leave the Marine Corps in a situation where you kind of just get dropped in within the first six months is it like you never really went in?
I mean, how does that all work?
MATT SPENCER: It's changed over the years.
I've looked it up a bunch of times.
I think you have to serve ninty days to get that veteran status.
if it's before ninty days, it's like you never were there.
TROY GENT: Okay, yeah.
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MATT SPENCER: Oh, yeah.
Dude, here's another thing.
When I was in the reserves, we had this guy that was...
He wasn't like the greatest looking guy.
And I know you've seen this too.
You get these guys that are like a four or five on the good looking scale and they show up to the Marine Corps Ball with these like nine or ten girls.
They're like supermodels.
We're like, "What are you doing with this guy?"
And this guy, he was so funny.
We asked his girlfriend.
We were like, "What are you doing with Adrian?"
She was like, "He makes me laugh."
We were like, "Yeah, he makes us laugh too."
Remember that time, it was the first deployment to Okinawa.
We were repelling and Captain Trapp got dropped.
TROY GENT: Oh, geez.
I don't know...
I think I do remember that.
MATT SPENCER: Canis was on belay and Canis dropped him and he bounced.
TROY GENT: That's right.
I remember that.
MATT SPENCER: It's only funny now because Captain Trapp was a big guy and he didn't get hurt.
And then Candace was like, "I'm going to be a Navy SEAL."
What are you talking about?
You're going to be a Navy SEAL?
You just dropped a company commander on the ground.
TROY GENT: Yeah, I remember he was told to go get a pap smear when he was a boot.
And he said, "Oh, okay."
So he walks down to medical and he says, "I was told I need to get a pap smear."
And they were like, "Go back to your barracks, man."
We were doing a range four hundred one time and it was like a hundred and twenty degrees in the middle of July.
Colonel Bennett comes walking by.
He sees a bunch of guys just lounging around like you always do when they're in a down time.
It's hot.
Guys want to take a break.
They just ran range four hundred.
And he's like, "Are you guys having a little siesta?"
And these guys didn't know if it was fiesta or siesta.
They didn't know Spanish.
So they were like, "Yes sir!
Yeah, we're having a party!"
And then Colonel Bennett goes over to the Company Gunny.
I forget who it was at the time.
And he's like, "Are these guys having a little siesta?"
And he's like, "Oh no, sir.
No, no.
These guys aren't going to sleep."
He's like, "Well, it looks like they are."
Company Gunny comes over and says, “So are you guys having a siesta?
They're like, "Yeah, yeah!"
And somebody who spoke Spanish was like, "No, we're not."
TROY GENT: Was that Gunny Mayor?
MATT SPENCER: Yeah, it might have been Gunny Mayor at the time.
So then after that, Colonel Bennett was like, "Oh we need to have HIT pocket classes.
These guys can't sleep during the middle of the day."
We had like a gunny that worked at the commissary as a part-time job, which ended up becoming his full time job because his OIC didn't care.
So he was working at the commissary full time when he should have been actually doing Marine Corps stuff.
TROY GENT: Oh, so he was taking what should have been Marine Corps time and working at the...
MATT SPENCER: Yeah, for like two years.
TROY GENT: Two years.
Geez.
MATT SPENCER: Yeah and then we had another guy that was from the infantry unit.
I think fifth Marines.
He was fapped out over to the MEF.
Nobody told him what he should be doing for work.
He was supposed to be with the G3 at the time.
Nobody checked on him so he went surfing every day.
TROY GENT: How long did that last?
MATT SPENCER: Oh, it lasted a while.
It was a one year fap, he did it for six months, and then finally I think somebody caught him during an inspection.
They were like, "What do you do?"
He's like, "Uh, nothing really.
I go surfing every day."
TROY GENT: Some of that time in the Marines is...
I mean, when we're in the field it's just twenty-four seven almost.
But sometimes in the barracks, for weeks at a time sometimes, it's like, "What are we doing here?"
MATT SPENCER: Oh, and the formations.
How many times do we have a formation?
Like six times a day?
Formation for PT.
Formation after PT.
Oh, let's have another formation.
When I was in the company office, somebody asked if the site count was up and they kept calling me.
"Is the site count up?"
"Is the site count up?"
TROY GENT: Oh, because they're trying to get out on libbo?
MATT SPENCER: Yeah, they're trying to get...
You know, it's a Friday and they were trying to get out of there.
I was like, "Yeah, the site counts up."
Nobody had told me the company commander, he wanted a formation before letting everybody go and I had already secured the company.
I was like, "Yeah, go.
Go on liberty."
Gunny Burns was like, "You can't do that!
You're going to get him fired!
You should be NJPed!"
I'm like, "Whatever.
The site count's been up for like an hour."
TROY GENT: What was your favorite rank?
MATT SPENCER: Somebody told me there were two ranks on the enlisted side that were the best.
They always said it was Corporal and Gunny.
I wouldn't agree too much with Corporal but I would agree with Sergeant because you do have enough power as a Sergeant but you can still get away with saying, "Uh, didn't know any better."
As a Gunny, I had a lot of responsibility and everybody listened.
So I think Gunny would be the best one.
TROY GENT: Yeah, you had two deployments to Iraq.
What were your duties there?
MATT SPECER: As a career planner, they always think you're going to be underutilized so they stack on all kinds of additional duties.
So the first time I was platoon sergeant.
They made me information security officer, making sure nobody wrote back any movement plans or anything to their loved ones on emails or whatever.
And then they were like, "Oh, by the way, you're also the Sergeant Major's bodyguard."
So I had to follow Sergeant Major around.
TROY GENT: What does a platoon look like in career planning?
What did your platoon look like on deployment?
MATT SPENCER: At the time I was with Marine Air Support Squadron 1.
They control the airspace.
When you have helo pilots or drone pilots, they're in control of the airspace and they could tell the pilots where to go, which route to take, and all that.
And they also look out for surface to air missiles and all that stuff.
My platoon was basically a bunch of admin guys and then some other direct air support guys that would basically just fall in there.
If we had corpsmen, the corpsmen would be in there as well.
TROY GENT: Okay, so what was your position on the battlefield?
MATT SPENCER: I actually didn't have one.
They said, "Sergeant Spencer, you're staying here."
So I stayed back in the rear even though I was in Iraq.
So I was kind of upset about it.
TROY GENT: So as a platoon Sergeant, you just never went outside the wire, really?
MATT SPENCER: Yeah, exactly.
TROY GENT: Did you do the same thing a second time?
MATT SPENCER: Second time we stayed at Al Asad Air Base, which is actually still there, and my role there was really boring.
I was the education officer.
By this time it was 2005.
So two years after the initial push into Iraq.
Most of the bases were fortified.
You know, you got your sentries and concertina wire and everything's built up.
Everybody was getting comfortable at that time, two years later.
So most of our people were taking college classes, we had an education center, and as the education officer, I was just like, "Okay, who wants to sign up for college classes?"
And I was just signing people up for that.
Handing out the free, tax-free bonuses to everybody who rated them.
TROY GENT: What were the biggest bonuses getting handed out?
MATT SPENCER: Oh, eighty thousand.
TROY GENT: Eighty-thousand.
For like, Lance Corporal through Gunny or what was that?
MATT SPENCER: Usually a Sergeant would get the eighty thousand but I had a couple Staff NCOs that got eighty thousand.
TROY GENT: Did you ever see any Marines in Iraq on post pull any crap that got them in trouble or anything?
MATT SPENCER: Not really.
I mean, there were like paralegal Marines and he was dating them two at a time.
And they were like, "Oh, by the way, we're not supposed to have sex in the combat zone."
And he was like, "Oh, we can get in trouble for this?"
TROY GENT: So they didn't mind two at a time?
MATT SPENCER: No, they didn't care.
It was their idea and he was just...
He was having a good time.
TROY GENT: Yeah, I heard some crazy stories over in Afghanistan.
People making fifty thousand dollars a year doing that.
MATT SPENCER: We had somebody that did ten thousand because customs would let them come back with ten thousand.
Oh, here's another story.
Because it was the initial push of Iraq, everybody was like trying to get over there.
And we had majors and lieutenant colonels from the reserves that took private flights to get there.
And they were like, "Hey, can I join your unit?"
TROY GENT: Holy cow.
MATT SPENCER: And we were like, "No, you can't.
What are you talking about?
Who are you?"
So then they would call back to Washington DC to have somebody join the unit.
They were like, "Yeah, we can do that.
You're now part of the unit."
It was crazy.
TROY GENT: I heard during the initial push there was just so many things going on that just weren't per Marine Corps...
I guess what would you call it?
Regulations, maybe?
MATT SPENCER: Yeah.
TROY GENT: When I was in 29 Palms a second time as an officer, the church ward I was in out there, they had a guy that was the elders quorum president who I think he retired as a master sergeant.
He was an S1 so dealt with finances.
Basically they gave him a suitcase of money wherever he went.
His job was basically just to pay people off for damages and that kind of thing.
MATT SPENCER: I heard about that.
TROY GENT: He said they had this guy.
He retired as a gunnery sergeant before the war and then when the war started, he's like, "I got to join again.
I got to go fight.
I got to go fight in this war."
And the time between him getting out and the time he wanted to rejoin was so far that they said, "We have to put you back in as a Lance Corporal."
And he's like, "I don't care.
I just want to go fight!"
Right?
So when he got over there, they didn't know what to do with him because he was a gunnery sergeant but a Lance Corporal.
And he said, "I'm calling myself Lance Gunny."
So what he did, he ripped off two Rikers up and left the three Rikers down so it looked like a Lance Gunny.
They gave him to my elders quorum president.
And he's like, "I'm here to do whatever you need me to do."
And he says, "Well, we'll go first name basis.”
Right?
Because they're basically equals.
“But in front of everybody else you gotta call me Master Sergeant.”
And he was like, “Okay, okay.”
So he says, "That guy just stayed on my right hand through the whole push, man."
He said, "We had so much fun together but people would look at his rank on his collar and they would be like, "What?
What's going on here?"
And my Master Sergeant friend would say, "Don't worry about it."
MATT SPENCER: Oh, geez.
Did he stay in or did he get EAS after that?
TROY GENT: He was just there for the initial invasion.
MATT SPENCER: I'm just wondering what his paperwork looked like.
TROY GENT: Yeah.
MATT SPENCER: Arnaby discharged a Lance Corporal Gunny.
TROY GENT: Yeah, I heard other stories too about just...
Like, "We're pushing and jump in if you want to go," kind of a thing.
Like a lot of that going on.
MATT SPENCER: And then the army raised their age limit to like 65.
So you see these 65 year olds.
We were like, "What the heck?
What are you doing here, Grandpa?
TROY GENT: Yeah, that's crazy.
Whoever wants to fight, just come join us.
We got to put a rank on your shoulder though, you know?
Some of these videos coming back from Ukraine and stuff...
These Americans, they go over there and are like, "Just put me in your Humvee," and they got them in the turret and everything and they just want to fight with the Ukrainians.
I wonder if anything's going on like that right now with the Israelis.
MATT SPENCER: Gee, I don't know.
TROY GENT: Well, Matt, I appreciate you being on here.
I'm really grateful.
Are there any last words you want to share with us?
MATT SPENCER: No, thanks for having me on.
TROY GENT: Alright, you bet.
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.