Navy cryptologist Shannon Kent, who died in an ISIS suicide attack in Syria, was torn between family and duty. Shortly before deploying, she applied to a military PhD program so she could stay with her boys. She was denied admission for medical reasons.
In the months after she got her deployment orders, Navy cryptologist Shannon Kent spent her days preparing to join a Special Operations task force in Syria battling the Islamic State. For Shannon, the mission was the culmination of a 15-year military career: language exams, fitness tests, repeated deployments alongside Navy SEALs.
On Jan. 16, Shannon texted Joe from Syria, letting him know she would be out on a mission. The city of Manbij had mostly been quiet since militants were pushed out by Kurdish forces who worked closely with the United States. But like anywhere in Syria, Americans were a target. Shannon and her colleagues often went out for several days at a time, sleeping in their trucks as they met locals and gathered intelligence. They dressed in civilian clothes, hoping to avoid attention.
In the Navy, Shannon qualified to specialize in the most challenging languages. She chose Arabic because she wanted to be at the tip of the spear of the 9/11 response. “She didn’t have the title. She couldn’t say ‘I’m a Navy SEAL’ or ‘I’m a Green Beret,’ ” her sister, Mariah Smith, said. A picture of Shannon Kent sits on a bookshelf in her family’s home in Anne Arundel County, Md. The mother of two was on her fifth combat tour. In 2013, Shannon returned from Afghanistan. President Barack Obama, hoping to curtail the country’s costly counterterrorism wars, had pulled U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011 and was moving to reduce the force in Afghanistan.
Joe, approaching 40 and now a father, decided it was time to end 17 years of continual deployments and put in his retirement papers in 2018. I never minded before. Now I feel sick to my stomach every day. Shannon Kent, in a text to her cousin about deploying In March 2018, Shannon was elated to learn she had secured one of 10 active-duty slots for the program. But there was a problem. Between her pregnancies, she had gotten a diagnosis of thyroid cancer. She matter-of-factly informed Joe, who was deployed at the time, by text only after she had emergency throat surgery to remove a growth.
Shannon tried to remain positive. She set her sights not just on securing entry into the PhD program — she hoped to get a waiver the following year — but on changing the Navy’s commissioning standard so others wouldn’t face the same obstacle. Still, “it was a gut punch,” her cousin said. “She would say, ‘Every part of my DNA is telling me don’t do this, it’s wrong,’ ” Joe said. “She said, ‘At the same time, my conscience and what I feel like has propelled me through my entire adult life is telling me I have to go on this deployment because it’s my turn.’ ”
Joe Kent with his younger son, Josh, at their home several weeks after Shannon’s death. Josh touches a memorial bracelet that his father wears in honor of a teammate who died in Iraq in 2005. LEFT: Joe Kent with his younger son, Josh, at their home several weeks after Shannon’s death. RIGHT: Josh touches a memorial bracelet that his father wears in honor of a teammate who died in Iraq in 2005. In Syria, Shannon spent time operating out of a network of small bases that U.S.
The suicide blast killed three other Americans: Jonathan Farmer, a Green Beret; Scott Wirtz, a civilian intelligence officer; and Ghadir Taher, a Syrian-born contractor who had returned to her home country to interpret for the U.S. military. Sometimes the kids asked to FaceTime with their mom. Not now, Joe replied, she’s busy. Josh, now 20 months, called Shannon’s sister Momma a few times. It shook her. “After he said it, his little eyebrows furrowed, and he looked at me like, wait, that’s not right,” Mariah said.
The Navy, acknowledging mistakes in handling Shannon’s case, quickly took steps to improve the process for considering waiver requests, resulting in an initial increase in approvals of 15 percent. A group of senators has appealed to the Pentagon’s leadership to consider additional changes affecting people in similar situations across the military.
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