Senior Chief Petty Officer Shannon Kent was a sailor, wife and mother to two young boys. She had served in the Navy for nearly 15 years when she left for her fifth deployment, this time to Syria just after Thanksgiving in 2018. A few months later, Kent, 35, was killed in a suicide bombing.
Kent was the first female combat death in Syria since the start of U.S. combat operations in the country five years earlier and the first woman in the U.S. military killed by enemy fire in at least three years at the time. In the attack that killed Kent, 18 others were also killed, including a Green Beret and two American contractors, allied coalition fighters and civilians.
Nearly two years after his wife's death, Joe Kent, a 20-year Special Forces veteran with 11 deployments himself, is raising his sons alongside the memory of their mother, while the "endless wars" that took her from them continue.
"She hated leaving the kids but at the same time she knew this was her life's work and her mission," he said.
The Kent boys were three and 18 months when their mother was killed.
"It's a huge hole," Joe said. "We try to talk about her every day, as much as we can so the boys can have some firm memories. They were very young when she was killed ... We try to discuss her memory every day. We have her pictures up."
Joe and Kent met working in a Special Operations intelligence unit in 2013, he said.
After nearly 20 years of sustained military conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and other areas of the world, Joe, who wears a bracelet with his wife's name stamped in the metal, said military families have borne the weight of those wars too long.
He said his wife's death isn't necessarily what changed his mind about the wars he helped fight.
"It solidified some things," he said. "Why are there young men, young women in Afghanistan right now, in Syria right now, in Iraq right now? What are they doing? Those are the questions that I do want my fellow Americans to ask themselves and ask their elected officials. Those are the questions I want my fellow veterans to give their opinion on just so the American people are more informed."
The United States lost 4,418 service members in Operation Iraqi Freedom from 2003 to 2010, according to the most recent Defense Department reports. In Operation Enduring Freedom, more than 2,200 service members died from 2001 to 2014. In Operations Inherent Resolve and Freedom's Sentinel, 193 American service members died. Those numbers include those killed in action and in non-hostile events. Tens of thousands of servicemembers have been wounded in action in those conflicts.
While the United States initiated the Authorization for Use of Military Force in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001 to target those responsible for the terrorist attacks, Joe said that mission later transformed into nation building, which continued to put troops at risk.
"Once we go somewhere, we don't leave," he said. "We build more bases and we continue our engagement. We suffer losses but we stay the course was very much the mantra.
"What we did, what all of us veterans did, what Shannon did, was we answered our nation's call," he continued. "We love our country, we're proud to serve it. I think it's time for those of us who've put our lives on the line, sacrificed, lost, fought and bled in these places to have our voices heard."
Concerned Veterans for America (CVA) launched Joe's video as part of its "End Endless Wars" campaign aiming to highlight the human cost of continued American military conflicts. A $1.5 million national ad campaign from the conservative-leaning veterans advocacy group funded by billionaire Charles Koch began earlier this year, and now a second phase is beginning with Joe's video. The group has backed President Donald Trump's announcements and efforts to withdraw troops from Syria and Afghanistan.
The group says that polling they conducted shows continued support for withdrawing from Afghanistan among veterans and military families from 2019 to 2020.
"Their story illustrates the human cost of war and the unimaginable loss our ongoing conflicts have inflicted on thousands of families," CVA Executive Director Nate Anderson said of the Kent family. “We hear Washington elites say we need to stay the course in these wars, but those discussions fail to justify the tremendous loss of human life."
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Reach Abbie Bennett: abbie@connectingvets.com or @AbbieRBennett. Sign up for the Connecting Vets weekly newsletter to get more stories like this delivered to your inbox.