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This is Later with Lee Matthews The
Lee Matthews Podcast more what you hear weekday

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afternoons on the Drive. Martis Gobland
is the editor in chief of Task and

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Purpose. He's a veteran US Army
and experienced conflict reporter with assignments in Afghanistan,

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Iraq, Ukraine, and also embedding
in the US military worldwide. Joe

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Kent is the husband of Shannon Kent. We're gonna explain the significance of Shannon

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Kent in just a minute, but
let me start with you. Marty.

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The name of the book is Send
Me The True Story of a Mother at

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War. How did this land in
your lap? Yeah? Great question.

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I didn't know Shannon personally, and
I didn't know Joe before her death.

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Shortly after she was killed alongside three
other Americans in Syria in twenty nineteen,

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Joe reached out because he wanted to
Shan and story to be told. And

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part of that was because there was
a narrative going around that her and her

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brothers in arms were you know,
out to lunch and and kind of characterized

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them as not the warfighters that they
were when they were killed hunting Isis.

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And so after her death. He
reached out and we did an initial article

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that I wrote, and then from
there we both agreed that, hey,

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the Shannon's story deserves more. It's
you know, we need a little bit

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more real estate than a article can
offer. And we got to work on

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a book. And that was almost
five years ago from now. And Joe,

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your wife, Shannon Kent wasn't in
Syria because she wanted to go to

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the beach. She was. She
was not. She was a career special

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operator and this was her fifth combat
deployment. Like Marty said, the other

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individuals that she was killed alongside,
you know, former Navy seal in Green

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Beret and then Syrian America, and
these were not the going out to the

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lunch crowd. They were there to
hunt terrorists and that's what they were ultimately

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killed doing the name of the book
is send me the true storylory of a

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mother at war. How did this
all start, Joe? For your wife,

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how did she get into Special Operations? I mean, the short answer

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is nine to eleven was the catalyst
for her joining. She's a native New

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Yorker. Her father and uncle were
both Ground zero first responders. Father's a

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New York State Police officer and then
uncle was a New York City firefighter,

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so that inspired her and her brother
to both go and do what a lot

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of Americans did, find a recruiter
and say, hey, send me,

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I want to go fight. Shannon
knew she had a knack for languages,

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so she volunteered for training in Arabic, which is a very challenging language to

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learn. She excelled at it.
She eventually got really good at speaking the

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Iraqi dialect and then volunteered for her
first deployment to go over to Iraq,

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not knowing exactly what they were going
to sign her to do, but she

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was pretty proactive and had a knack
for connecting of humans, so she became

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not just somebody who could translate Arabic, not just someone who could help intercept

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enemy signals, but she was also
out there, you know, meeting of

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local and romans, and especially in
a culture like the Middle East, that

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gave the Special Operations task or she
was working with access to females, which

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is very hard for males to get
in the Middle East, so it opened

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up that whole segment of the population
to collect intelligence from. And that's kind

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of how she found her way in
Special Operations. It is because of her

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abilities that she earned a slot on
with the most of the elite of the

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elite. Was this before you met
her or after? This was before I

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met her? So I met Shannon
after she had already done for combat deployments

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with Special Operations. We ended up
at the same special operations unit, of

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a pretty secret of special operations unit. We talk about a little bit in

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the book. We had briefly met
in Baghdad years before met for about ten

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minutes. She was actually briefing me
on a terrorist location of a guy that

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she had kind of hunted down and
done a lot of the intelligence work on.

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But then I didn't see her again
for about seven years. Joe Kent,

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husband of late Shannon Kent, and
Marty Skoleveland Jr. Co authors,

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have sent me the True Story of
a Mother at War, and Marty he

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just touched on it. Joe just
touched on it. You wouldn't think that

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sending a woman operative into a society
like Iraq, where women are so diminished,

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would be a good idea, But
I imagine through her connections with other

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women, she was able to get
perspective that maybe another operative couldn't. Yeah,

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I really think that it was not
just with other women that was certainly

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part of it, but even the
men. We've got portions of the book

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where we talk about her going over
and befriending some of the other Iraqi Special

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Operators and being able to seamlessly move
between Kurdish Iraqi and you know, multiple

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different dialects of Arabic in the same
conversation, and even getting some of the

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you know, the Iraqi Special Operators
on board in a more way, in

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a more significant way with their American
counterparts. I mean, she added to

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the mission in so many different ways, and it was because of her ability

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to not just collect and analyze intelligence, but really to connect with humans of

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all cultures and get the most out
of those conversations. And a lot of

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times it led to very effective results
on the battlefield, Marty. From what

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I've read about operatives that serve the
United States, the best operatives are the

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ones who are as inconspicuous as possible, that looked like somebody but also everybody.

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Uh how what was was Shannon able
to kind of blend in from a

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I mean, in other words,
she wasn't large and glamorous in stature.

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If I may say that no,
she wasn't, and I think she blended

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in in a lot of different ways. Of course, you know, in

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some of the more traditional parts of
the of the Middle East, you know,

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women cover up most of themselves,
and so it's not immediately available.

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But then even when you look at
how what she was doing when she was

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killed in Syria, it wasn't that
she was blending in with locals, but

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who was blending in with the regular
forces that were already in the area and

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then slipping out to go do her
own thing. And so there was a

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lot of different ways that I think
a lot of people would probably be surprised

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by, like the ways that she
would blend in with her environment to get

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the best results. It's the extraordinary
story of American special operator and trailblazer Shannon

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Kent, who hunted high value targets
and classified missions. The story is told

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by her husband, Joe Kent,
and co author Martyrs Skoveland Junior. Send

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me the True Story of a Mother
at War and Joe, I can only

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imagine what the conversations around the dinner
table after a hard day's work with you

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two were. Wow, how is
your day, honey? Yeah? I

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killed a terrorist, how about you? And you know, we really kind

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of bonded because we could be frank
and honest with each other, which is

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a struggle I think for a lot
of people in our line of work.

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If they if they marry someone who's
done that line of work, there's only

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so much they can tell them.
So we could be pretty fourth right with

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each other. But at the end
of the day, we were pretty normal,

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just like anybody else. You know, We're trying to make sure our

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kids were, you know, growing
up healthy and happy. So that was

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mostly it was mostly routine. But
I think the things that we discussed,

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you know, like like work usually
had a added element of danger secrecy.

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But luckily because we both had the
same security clearances, we could be you

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know, pretty forthright and honest with
each other. And Joe, you both

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also had the understanding that your your
work was very dangerous and that you might

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not come home. You know,
we did. I mean, the thing

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is when you when you do this
for long enough, it does be the

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danger becomes routine. And so that
that's kind of one of the I'd say

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that the dangerous parts and the downside
of both of us being in this line

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of work. We kind of looked
at deployments as just another thing, you

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know, not and that we look
forward to doing with with kids at home.

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But at the end of the day, it was what we had both

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done our entire professional lives. I
mean, Shannon was killed in our fifth

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combat deployment. I did eleven deployments
myself. So to us, you know,

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it sounds really crazy when we talk
about with outsiders that you know,

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we were leaving for several months of
a time, going to foreign countries,

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being in danger. But to us, we had done it for so long

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that you know, we understood the
dangers, but it had become very much

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part of our lives and very much
just you know, kind of routine for

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us and Marty. How old was
Shannon when she lost her life serving our

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country. She was thirty five years
old, which is crazy for me to

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think about now that I'm older now
today than that she was when she passed,

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and still very very young. Both
her and Shannon are both her and

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Joe and very early in their marriage
and their kids only one in three years

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old. I mean, it really
does when you think about the ages,

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it really does drive these points home. Joe Kent, husband of the late

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Shannon Kent, a operative in the
War on Tara. Marty Scoveland junior co

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authors have Send Me The True Story
of a Mother at War. Extraordinary story

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and an extraordinary summer read. Thank
you for both bring in It to us

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today. Thank you, Thanks for
listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the

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Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to
listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from

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five to seven and iHeartMedia presentation