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We want to welcome to VeteransRadio today two veterans themselves.
We're going to talk about a book that's coming out here in May of 2024 called Send Me.
The True Story of a Mother at War, and we were fortunate to talk to her husband, Joe Kent.
Joe, welcome to VeteransRadio.
Thanks so much for having me. Great to be here.
And Maris Soklavend, Jr., who is the editor-in-chief of Task and Purpose,
and probably the guy who put pen to paper here is a former Army Ranger,
which surprises me he could put pen to paper, but maybe it's all that time he was an experienced conflict reporter
and working at Task and Purpose.
Marty, welcome to VeteransRadio.
Thanks for having me on. And I'll jump right up and say, I'll give Joe a lot of credit here.
He put a lot of pen to paper as well to make this book what it was.
Holy cow, you mean a guy who spent 20 years as an Army Ranger in a green parade,
has editorial and writing skills? Way to go, Joe.
Lots of repetition there when I was working on the intel side,
but that was definitely a challenging skill for me to learn while I was in the military.
Normally when I'm talking to the Marine writers, they always start,
well, my first draft was with Crams. So you get a little bit of that.
So this is an amazing story of an amazing woman, Shannon Kent, who grew up in New York.
Her dad was a state trooper. Her mom was a teacher.
Early on, she demonstrated linguistic abilities.
Tell me a little bit about the early years and why Shannon decided,
hey, I'm going to join the Navy.
Well, 9-11 was the big catalyst.
I mean, she had thought about joining the military before.
She was very interested in the world beyond her small town in New York state.
She wanted to eventually join the Foreign Service and the State Department.
Something along those lines.
She taught herself French and Spanish as a kid,
so she knew that she could learn languages.
But then after 9-11, like you said, her father and her uncle also was a New York City firefighter.
So they were both ground zero first responders.
So once 9-11 happened, Shannon knew exactly what she needed to do and she felt called the Serbs.
So she found the first recruiter who would listen to her and that was actually a Navy recruiter.
So she went to all the different services and said, hey, I can learn Arabic.
The towers just got knocked down by people from the Middle East.
I can learn that language.
I guess the Army and the Marines gave her the run around and said, hey, you scored really high.
We want to teach you Russian or Chinese.
And the Navy was the first one who said, like, you want to learn Arabic?
OK, sure. Sign right here, young lady.
Well, a lot of these stories, you get recruited just sort of that way.
It wasn't maybe exactly what you were thinking.
Her brother was a Marine, I believe.
So her and her brother actually right after 9-11, her brother's about a year younger than her.
They both went and found recruiters.
And Mike knew that he wanted to be a Marine because the Marines have probably the best recruiting propaganda out there.
So Mike had his mind made up.
He joined the Marines and Shannon settled on the Navy.
But they actually both because of their father and their uncle went out and sought out recruiters right after 9-11,
like so many warriors of our generation.
Joe, you went into the Army.
Ultimately, they became a Green Beret.
You've also done a number of other special class-fed special app units.
What compelled you to join?
You know, I was in before 9-11.
So really, I like to say it was a combination of the A-Team and G.I. Joe growing up.
I don't know as far back as I can remember, I wanted to be a commando of some sort and read every single Vietnam book.
I could get my hands on.
Eventually decided I wanted to be a Green Beret because they always seemed like they were involved in conflicts and adventures,
even if America wasn't necessarily at war.
So I was already fully committed by the time 9-11 happened.
And that just really heightened my resolve to stay in and to continue to fight.
Larry Philiston, why did you join up as an ultimate Army Ranger?
You know, I did come in after 9-11.
I was a freshman or sophomore in high school when that happened.
And certainly that solidified the idea that I was going to go directly into the military after I graduated high school.
But similar to Joe, I grew up reading those Vietnam memoirs and, you know, almost every male in my family had served in the military.
So I grew up around those people.
Even in high school, one of my uncles was in the Air Force.
He was like an OIF one guy.
So I still remember sitting on the phone in the kitchen talking to him overseas in Iraq.
And it just, the entire, I think my entire world just kind of pushed me in that direction.
And there was never really any idea other than I'm going to go join the Army.
And I think it was a, specifically wanted to be a Ranger because of a combination of seeing Black Hawk down and then reading the news reports about Tahrgar.
I wrote a high school report on Roberts Ridge or the Battle of Tahrgar.
And that really, I think between that and Black Hawk down really solidified the idea of like, I don't want to just join the Army.
I want to be an Army Ranger and, you know, go, they seem to be where the fight is.
And I wasn't wrong.
Well, I've had some radio listeners, so we're talking to two real committed patriotic men here.
But the real emphasis on this discussion is an incredible woman, Sharon Kent, who joined the Navy and had this incredible career as a linguist and cryptologist.
Joe, explain to the regular folk out there what a Navy cryptologist does.
Yeah, it's a really long way to say that she steals enemy signals.
So basically, if it comes out of a cell phone, it comes out of a computer or radio transmission.
She was trained to attack into it, to steal it, to decode it.
But then a big issue with that is that usually it's in a foreign language.
And so you'll get cryptologists that have the ability to do all the stuff with the ones in the zeros and actually steal the signal.
But then you get people like Shannon who are dual trained to not only steal the signal, but then if it comes through in Arabic and multiple dialects of Arabic,
that she can then translate it into actual intelligence.
She went and this is typical in the military, right? The defense, the DOD has a linguistics classes that they put you through.
But these were things that she amazingly excelled at.
Talk to us about some of that training and commitment to really go in depth as an Arabic speaker.
Yes, and she went to the Defense Language Institute out at Monterey, California.
And it's interesting, you always hear about the training that Rangers go through and Green Brays go through,
but you don't really hear about things like DLI because it just doesn't make for a really cool video.
However, it's some of the most challenging training that I think people in the military can undergo.
It's 18 months of intensive language instruction where they take people from all over the United States of America who might not ever heard one word of a foreign language before.
And they take them and they make them not just proficient, but they make them fluent in reading, writing and speaking in about 18 months.
And so that was, I think, Shannon's kind of dream job.
So she got to be very deeply immersed in Arabic.
But as anyone knows, as most people know, Arabic is a very complicated language.
There's modern standard Arabic, but then there's different dialects.
And Shannon really found a niche in the different dialects.
When she finally got over to Iraq, she got pretty obsessed with how Iraqis actually talked versus modern standard Arabic that she had learned in Monterey.
And she had that ear.
It's the same ear, I think, that musicians have.
She was also musically inclined.
I agree, and Bray, as we have to learn language as well, we don't need to learn it quite to that level.
And one time when I was studying Arabic, I asked Shannon, what's the secret?
How are you so good at this?
And with a straight face, she said, well, you just listen to someone, a native speaker, say the word.
And then you remember it, and then you say it exactly like they said it.
I was like, OK, our brains are not exactly wired the same way.
That's not how mortal men learn language.
Yeah, you learn how to order a beer and a few other things.
And she was actually, it was incredible in reading the book, Send Me, that is coming out here in May of 2024,
the focus that she had and her ability to pick up different dialects.
And this isn't a sit at home job, is it?
This isn't in a nice comfy office in DC or in moderate California.
Tell us about her overseas assignment and multiple deployments, Joe.
So it's interesting, you know, she initially volunteered right out of language school to go over to Iraq.
I want the Navy calls an individual augmentation.
So her, she wasn't part of a unit that all deployed together, like Marty and I deployed.
She deployed as an individual, and she basically could have gotten put anywhere.
But she ends up at the Special Operations Task Force and they essentially say,
hey, your job is to help us intercept enemy communications and then to translate them.
However, at the time, there was a high demand for people to go out and actually interact with Iraqis on the ground.
And that was not what a lot of people wanted to do.
They wanted to go kick in the doors and do the sexy type of direct action missions.
But Shannon said, hey, I actually really enjoy talking to these people.
I've got an act for the language.
And so because of that ability to go out and talk with actual Iraqis and collect human intelligence,
she got put right on the front lines and a SEAL team eventually put her with them as a part of their element to actually help them go out and track down bad guys.
So really, I mean, Shannon's career is just a story of her volunteering to be at the tip of the spear and improving her worth,
usually based on her ability to understand the language, but then also to really understand the human factor.
And because she got so good at human intelligence, she really became quite the threat because usually human intelligence collectors are separate from signals intelligence collectors that sometimes even separated from linguists.
Shannon basically was a one stop shop.
And that's why she ended up down there on the ground level with a special operations task force way before women were even allowed anywhere near combat arms.
Marty, maybe you want to expand on this.
She was a incredible woman warrior, fierce, focused, intelligent.
Talk to us about how unusual it is for a cryptologist, a woman cryptologist to find herself at the pointy end of the spear with special operations.
You know, I think that the way we have to look at Shannon's trajectory through the military is put it in context of what was going on within the larger special operations world at that time.
Shannon came in at a time when special operations was evolving from very siloed units like SEAL stuck with SEALs, Rangers with range, you know, so on and so forth.
And basically what happened throughout the Joint Special Operations Command and some initiatives that happened in the mid-auts there was they started bringing everybody together and they needed intelligence to be that connective tissue throughout the organization.
And so if you had somebody like Shannon come along, like Joe said, that was kind of a one stop shop could speak all the different languages, not just literally Arabic or French or Spanish,
but the languages of the different special operations units and their cultures and that sort of thing.
She was able to be that connective tissue and she was able to get into these positions and get so close to the tip of the spear there and going out on missions,
taking part in direct action raids, all this sort of stuff because she was able to get there before anybody was even asking if this is okay.
You just had commanders on the ground over there saying, hey, this is a value add to my team.
Our organization is changing to be more like we need to have the people in place,
share intelligence and have people that are enabling the mission to be as effective as it could.
I mean, it was an industrialized scale of network-centric warfare happening in Iraq back in the mid-auts and somebody like Shannon,
you skipped right past, oh, can we have a woman with us straight to, oh my God, she's somebody that can directly impact our mission and make us more successful on the battlefield.
And so just, I don't think people even asked the question if it was okay. She just went right into it.
It's one of those things where I think once you demonstrate yourself and that ability to respect funds,
she had a focus always to keep earning that respect and train hard both physically to be in physical shape to stay with special operations,
but also linguistically, she would listen Joe to Arabic news broadcasts at home when she was stateside to keep her language skills sharp. That's incredible to me.
And you know, the physical side is really interesting in that a lot of times Joe and I have probably worked with a lot of guys and gals that come on as enablers or support.
And you know, there's questions on whether they can keep up, right, from a physical perspective.
And Shannon was one of those people from what I understand, there was never any question on whether she could keep up and in fact,
helped out a lot of folks as far as making them better runners, better at swimming, better at some of these things that she was, you know, physically gifted in.
So it's not like she was just a great Intel analyst or a great human Intel collector or any or a great linguist.
She had all the physical attributes that you expect out of somebody that's working at the highest levels of special operations.
The thing that I think is important to get across here is something that I read.
Joe, you first met Shannon. I think in like 20.
2007, I think it was. And.
She was all business, no flirtation.
She she was there for the mission and focused on the mission.
If I'm reading this right and I'm trying to look find the date.
A while you ended up finding bumping into each other states. I had somewhere along the line before anything else happened.
But the importance of having respect and being all business.
Is one of those messages that I think is important for some some people to hear and it probably impressed you as well.
Yeah, I really did. I mean, she was all business despite my my best efforts. I should I should caveat that she was professional.
I probably was a little bit less professional.
But yeah, no, I actually met her at the the embassy complex in 2007.
I was over there just trying to match up some of the intelligence that my human sources were reporting back with some of the signals.
Intelligence people and I literally just walked into a brief that Shannon was giving on target that I was chasing.
And I was really impressed, not, you know, obviously by how she looked, but also the fact that she really knew her stuff.
And she was I would say doing much more common sense analysis than usually I would find at a.
An intelligence centric organization like she was working in at the time and actually met her about a week or two.
We figured this out years later. I met her a week or two before the SEAL team brought her down to where the actual the teams were deploying every night.
Going after bad guys. But she was there and she was putting to get she was tying together the pieces in a way that really impressed me.
And that was my fourth combat deployment.
So I kind of thought that I knew what was going on and the way that she was taking the human factor and overlaying that with her knowledge of Iraqi culture.
In order to hunt down bad guys to put them into time and space so that we could kill them was incredibly impressive to me as somebody who had just really dedicated my life to the Iraq deployments at that time.
Just seeing that Shannon was equally as committed to me was was really, really impressive.
And something that stuck with me for for many years until we actually ended up stationed at the same unit together years later.
And I mentioned earlier her intelligence and her focus, but I think there's also as you read the book, there's this positivity, but humility and humor that she had Joe that that kind of took her to another place in terms of how people view her.
Yes, certainly. I mean, she just had a very humble personality, but very, very humorous always had a joke never really took herself or a situation too seriously, which, you know, I think a lot of people who've never been in a high stress high performing environment like a special operations task force.
You kind of tend to think that it's a very serious environment and it is, but I personally think that true professionals are the ones who can usually rise above the situation and keep a certain degree of calm and Shannon just exuded that in spades.
I could tell from the time that we met and then to once we met again later on in life and started dating.
I mean, she had, I would say, almost the same demeanor as a lot of really experienced special operators who had just kind of been there and done that.
And that was the way that she carried herself never had any ego. She was always quick to mentor, you know, the, the sailors and other troops below her.
That was actually really one of her hobbies. She'd had people over to her house who were struggling at work.
She started a swim program and a run program for some of the people that were below her in rank that were having a hard time in that realm.
So that was just her nature, I think, as a as a human, but then also as a just as a mother and as a wife and everything that she was.
It, it, and maybe Mario last you to talk about it.
Shannon did. I think it was five overseas deployment, Joe did, I think 11 combat deployments.
Murray tells what happened on the last deployment for for Shannon.
Yeah, so I really think the way that I look at her different deployments, her fifth deployment was really the pinnacle of her professional career as as far as what she was doing.
I think she was at the very highest level doing things that so few people can or will do in a very dynamic environment.
I mean, Syria in 2019 was kind of unlike anything we'd ever seen before, as far as like a geopolitical environment.
I mean, it was a very complicated place where a mistake could cause a lot of problems at an international scale.
Right. We've got it in the book somewhere where one of the guys that we talked to that was also working
at theaters like I mean, we're literally looking at Russian flags and, you know, right across the way.
And I mean, it was a very dynamic environment.
A lot of places for things go wrong and you needed trusted professionals like Shannon.
Shannon and Joe both were people that were a little bit of an anomaly, even within special operations,
the fact that they stayed at the tactical level throughout their their entire career.
I mean, it was usually people move on to sort of administrative leadership sort of positions.
They were both very much at the ground level, like doing the job.
And so for Shannon, that was her deployment.
She was doing key leader engagements.
She was doing source meets.
She was very involved in shaping what what was going on in Syria at that time in regard to a post ISIS sort of mess that was there.
And yeah, I mean, ultimately, you know, on January 16th of 2019, a suicide bomber came in to walk into the middle of their element
as they were getting ready to leave an area that they were working on that they were working in in Manbij, Syria.
And it took the life of her as well as three other Americans and injured many more and killed many other Syrian defense forces as well.
And it's a very and as you read it in the book, even it was a very tragic, but very abrupt end to an incredible person's life.
And that's one thing, you know, for Joe and and the rest of her family, I imagine it's very like it's the last thing they expected.
You you consider when a family member goes off to war that that's certainly a possibility.
But the odds are in your favor.
Most people who go to war, at least in the 21st century, they come back from war, right?
Like maybe not in one piece all the time, but most of them are coming back alive, usually.
And so you just figure the odds in your favor.
So her dying after such a long career of doing incredible work and as a mother and kids.
And it just it was very abrupt.
And so we tried to one of my hopes with the book as people come to know Shannon throughout the book is that they experienced even one one thousandth of the pain
and and just lost that Joe and her family felt when they found out.
You know, incredible person.
And we always like go out of our way and that was great.
Okay, I'm honored to those who are lost.
And along with Shannon that day, it was Jonathan Farmer, we raise Scott Wurz, a civilian intelligence officer.
She worked with a lot and Godara Tara, a Syrian born contractor who had returned to Syria.
To being an interpreter for the US military, all for those folks lost their life on the suicide bomb event on January 16, 2019.
The recognition that this doesn't do the family any good, but it's important.
I think for for society, the recognition Shannon got in in death is substantial.
The country on her, the Navy on her, the chiefs in the naval honored her. She was the first enlisted service person to be in state at the Naval Academy.
She's buried in Arlington, the number of speakers and commentators about her incredible patriotism.
And I'm sure it, as I say, it doesn't do any good for the family at the time, but I think it's important.
And certainly one-way society recognizes these airlines who have been out there working so hard.
Now, I had to read 200 pages to get to the title of the book.
And then when I got there, I went, it's so obvious.
And the book, Send Me, the true story of a mother at war, Send Me comes from a biblical quote Isaiah 6 to 8, where it's asked, whom shall I send, Lord?
And the response is send me. And that really captured up Shannon's spirit, right?
She could have ducked out six different ways on these deployments.
But she really responded with that Send Me approach, didn't she, Joe?
She did. I mean, that was how we lived our lives. I mean, that's why I, that was really what attracted me to her in the first place.
And then why we decided to get married. I mean, we cover it in the book, one of our first dates.
We just sort of talked about like, hey, why are we doing this? Why are you still in the military?
Because that we, you know, established, we both had multiple deployments and we're both just very much committed to our country, to our fight, to our brothers and sisters on our left and right.
And we both figured, hey, if someone's going to go, it should be us.
And as we were talking about Shannon's final deployment, we talk about this a lot in the book that was very challenging for our family.
She had another path that was kind of carved out for her that would have left her back in the States.
That didn't work out because of some catch 22 types of reasons.
But she could have gotten out of that final deployment. And I know, I know there was a lot of her and me that was saying, hey, we should, you should just get out of this deployment.
I mean, you're a mom now. It's completely different. No one's going to think any less of you if you get out of it.
But at the end of the day, Shannon said, no, if people are going to go and they're going to be in harm's way, why am I any different?
I have all the skills. I should be the one that goes forward and fights for our country.
And so that's, that's why we entitled the book that way. And that's just how Shannon lived her life.
Selfless sacrifice. It's incredible.
Marty, as the executive editor in chief of task and purpose, this has to be, you see many stories, but this one just have to be right at the top of the list.
And it's not even my work in journalism. I mean, that's certainly part of it. I've seen all these stories. I've been to a lot of memorials for fallen service members.
There's, you know, I know this world pretty well.
When I went down to meet Joe in the, in Virginia, or the Maryland, Maryland, Virginia, DC area there, where they lived. And I still very vividly remember sitting down at a table to talk to Joe and one of their family friends, Ali, and kind of doing the initial interview.
And then it was, I think the next day that we went to the memorial at the Naval Academy. And that was when it really hit me.
How much of an impact Shannon had had on this world, on the military, on the special officer, you know, on the likes, but this world, you know, she had had such an impact that the people that came out for that the, the, it was unlike anything that I had seen.
You know, like I said, it's not the first memorial for a fallen service member I'd ever been to.
It was unlike anything that I'd ever seen. And even through writing that initial article about her, you go through some of it and there's times where I'm just like, man, I couldn't make this up.
Like this is, this is something that you almost like, if you're writing, trying to write like a Jason Bourne character or something like that, you would maybe come up with some of the stuff like she was, but this is a real person that really possessed these capabilities, but also the capacity for,
for being a mother, for being a wife, for a sister, a friend, a mentor, like all these other things that you don't typically associate with the, you know, the cold hearted killer special operator, right, like, but she was able to do all of those things and I really,
you know, when I first saw the first news report when it came out, obviously I have to follow the news pretty closely and I saw the first articles come out on January 16th about an explosion in Syria.
And then a couple in, you know, in the days after where they released the names after the families had been notified.
And they were framing this as like they were out to lunch or something like, like, like this was some sort of like,
joyride that they were doing in Manbij, but even I knew at that time, looking at, okay, Scotty Wurz, Shannon Kent, John Farmer, Gadir, like,
this isn't the, John, I've said a couple of different times, this wasn't the going out to lunch crowd, like this wasn't the people that were just messing around in a war zone, like you just, those types of people aren't together in a war zone for, for messing around, you know,
it's all, it's all business, it's all business. And again, it's an inspiring story. I hope many, many young women pick this up and read it and are inspired by Shannon's focus, dedication, intelligence,
passivity, humility, all of those things which come through in the book, send me,
gentlemen, if you've got a few more minutes, I'd like to go to the third area that I want to talk about it, but, but it totally up to you if you don't have time, I understand.
Yeah, yeah, this is, this is sort of above and beyond the book, if you will, but it comes out through the book and I think it's an important message for the civilian community to understand.
And Joe, you really lived it here with Shannon and that's the importance of family, both, both, you have two boys, both as parents, the importance of being able to deploy and take care of the kids, but also sisters, mothers, friends, cousins.
Talk to us a little bit about the importance of family for those who are deploying.
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's incredibly important, especially if you, you have kids. I mean, I was pretty fortunate. I did the vast majority of my deployments before I was married, before I had kids.
And so that definitely gave me a different view of deploying and I actually had, I've gone back in years since and kind of apologized to some of my teammates who had kids and had families and like I was living this great adventure and wondering why they were, you know, having some sort of struggles at home and things like that.
But it is very challenging. So if you don't have a spouse that, that understands why you're in the fight and it has equally committed to you, it's going to be very difficult. And I was very blessed to have Shannon in my life because she understood exactly what I was going to go do whenever I deployed when we were married and had kids.
But then also having a family support system, I mean, my parents were absolutely amazing. They would always fly out if I was gone or Shannon was gone to help us out with the kids and just to be there. Shannon's sister lived with us for a year after our first son was born and was basically, you know, when Shannon and I were both off at work or I deployed for a big part of that year.
And it was Shannon and her sister there with my first son, with our first son Colt. And then, you know, once, once Shannon deployed again, both my parents came back out, Shannon's parents came down quite a bit.
We did, and then just a robust network too of friends. I mean, the longer you're in the military, the more people, you know, get married and have kids and those types of things. And so you do end up really supporting each other.
And Shannon had a really great community up there in the Fort Meade area of other working mothers, you know, who were going through some of the same struggles as well as her. And so they were able to support each other. And so it's just, it's something that doesn't get talked about anywhere near enough.
I think as we discussed going off and deploying to war, how important that home structure is and just how vital the family is.
We have a recruiting problem in this country that's well documented and part of it I think are, you know, parents who don't have any exposure to the military lifestyle, thinking part of their kids, whether it be a boy or a girl, a young man, young woman, are going to be lonely, that they're not going to have family, that there's not going to be this community or network around.
But one really develops and Marty, I'm sure you saw that as well in your time in the service.
Yeah, I.
So on the tail end of my military career I was a recruiter and there is a big gap between what parents think the military is and families think military is and what it actually is.
But ultimately, at the end of the day, it is service. You, you, you are going to go do something that is not always going to be comfortable that is going to
be a big problem. And so I think that's one of the complications for you at home and family and to Joe's point. If you've got people in your life that understand that and are able to support that and support you that makes all the difference in the world.
It really does I, you know, I didn't do any of my deployments with kids.
I looked my wife through four out of my five deployments but we didn't have any kids or anything like that. I look back on it now I totally know what you're saying Joe like I have. I look back at the guys I deployed with who had families and kids I'm like I don't know how they did it.
I literally cannot understand what it would take to be able to to go through that and Joe even at the tail end of your career with you still deploying having to say, you know, kiss the kids goodbye, like I mean that is, that is a level of service that I don't think most people will ever ever
understand. We don't we don't give a credit to the mothers who do this right.
Joe everybody's focusing on what an incredible warrior.
Shannon was and selfless she was, but she brought that same sort of energy to being a mother didn't she.
She certainly did I mean Shannon somehow squeezed 25 to 26 hours out of every single day. I mean that was just her personality. She really just went all in on everything that she did including being a mom I mean she she carved out a ton of time for our sons she was there, you know when they woke up in
the morning she was there when they would go to sleep at night. That's another reason why her fifth deployment was just it was so painful for her to actually say goodbye and leave the boys and it was a much a much bigger conversation that we had and just a very hard lift for her but I mean she put the
child into into being a mother I mean it's crazy now that I look back on it there was so much that Shannon was doing to make memories to document our memory she made these great family albums and she's family books that when she was doing I thought she was a little bit like obsessive it's like what's
why do you have to do this like right I mean she would make sure that she did them, you know, basically every year on the year. She was just really good about making memories making every meal special decorating our house of artwork that she made that was you know that represented
me. I mean she was just she did not do anything halfway she did everything all the way and she loved our sons and was a great wife. You know, 100% of the time. So it's just, she's just an amazing human and loved everyone in her fair her family and then also just her her military
family as well. And some of this is just, again, I think the civilian world doesn't get this. It's perfectly normal stuff that military moms are doing. They're making the garden out back they're cooking special meals there.
And she had an artistic talent with the mosaics. As you mentioned, I'll call it scrapbooking I don't know if that's the right term, but all that normal mother stuff that should that civilian and military moms have have together, and we need to kind of get it across to folks that
if it can be a great life and you can do all these things can't you Joe.
I mean, our neighbors in our neighborhood really they knew that Shannon was in the military I think they thought that she was like a translator that worked at Fort Meade and kind of had an office job.
It wasn't until she deployed and she was killed they really understood what she did because she was out there, you know pushing the stroller with with all the other moms, I mean they were all making gardens together, just you know very normal every day nine to five
I think they, they knew that I had this neat title of like being a green beret or whatever so they assumed I was off doing you know commando type of things but they thought that Shannon was just the normal housewife working mom just like the rest of them.
But yeah, you're you're right I think is the military has such a, I just a male forward facing appearance for obvious reasons.
And I hope you forget that women in the military are going home and cooking meals and making photo albums and just doing all the regular mom type of stuff and they balance all of that and I think that's a much more difficult balancing act that is being a working
dad in the military just because I think that you know most of society understands what a working dad is but this working mother also being in the military is something that's that's relatively new.
And I think that's a much more difficult balancing act that's really a macho reburied recognizing how hard working mothers work as that's good stuff right there.
I want to thank both you guys for taking the time today to talk to veteran radio listeners about sending the incredible two story of a mother at war. It's really the Shannon Kent story.
It's extremely well. And this is this is one everybody should read and Marty and Joe, thank you for the time today.
Absolutely.
And I want to thank everybody for listening to veterans radio today. I am Jim Fawcone. It's been a pleasure to be your host. I'm a veterans disability lawyer at legal help for veterans and you can reach us at 806-93-4800 or legal help for veterans dot com on the web.
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