Hometown: Pine Plains, NY
Branch: U.S. Navy
Unit: Cryptologic Warfare Activity 66, Fort Meade, Maryland
Military Honors: Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, Meritorious Service Medal, Commendation Medals (3)
Date of Sacrifice: January 16, 2019 - KIA in Manjib, Syria
Age: 35
Conflict: War in Afghanistan, 2001-2021

Shannon Smith, her younger sister Mariah, and her younger brother Mike grew up in Pine Plains, New York, a picturesque Hudson Valley hamlet of 1,000 people—roughly halfway between Albany and New York City.

Her parents, Stephen and Mary Smith, recall that when Shannon was just two years old, she insisted on “reading” the bedtime story, even though she wasn’t yet able to read. She’d recite the book’s verses from memory to a father who was exhausted from a long day serving as a New York State trooper—or to her mother Mary, an elementary school teacher.

At the time, no one could have imagined that the rare linguistic skills on display from the bright young girl would later serve her country in a unique way.

At Stissing Mountain Junior-Senior High School in Pine Plains, Shannon borrowed a textbook from her French teacher and—with the help of a foreign exchange student from France—learned to speak the language over just one summer.

During her school years, Shannon was a tireless overachiever both academically and athletically. She was active in theater, played the flute, sang in the chorus, and excelled at volleyball, basketball, cross country, and track & field.

She took summer jobs in a local pharmacy and also worked cleaning stables and grooming horses at the Mashomack Polo Club. On her own, Shannon learned Spanish so she could converse with the other stable hands.

Itching to Serve

Before she graduated from high school in 2001, Shannon spoke with military recruiters and asked about becoming a Navy SEAL. At the time, women were not allowed into combat, so the recruiters suggested alternatives that would leverage Shannon’s skills with language.

Being 17 years old, she would need her parents’ signatures to serve. Persuaded by her mother, Shannon agreed to give college a try first and enrolled at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh to study communications and mass media.

Everything changed when 19 terrorists from the Islamist extremist group al Qaeda attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City were 100 miles south of Pine Plains. Shannon’s father and her uncle—a New York Firefighter—responded to the call.

Soon after, Shannon’s younger brother Mike joined the U.S. Marine Corps, and Shannon left college to enlist in the U.S. Navy as a Cryptologic Technician Interpretive (CTI) on December 11, 2003. According to the Navy’s description, “Languages are more than just communication—they’re cultural codes that need to be analyzed and in some cases, broken. As a [CTI] you’re more than a linguist—you’re a cultural expert, able to translate and interpret foreign communications.”

Training, Deployments…and Family

Shannon’s military career began with basic training at Naval Station Great Lakes, north of Chicago, Illinois. On completion, she was sent to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, where she earned an associate’s degree in Arabic and graduated with honors.

She would ultimately become fluent in seven languages. Rather than providing translation, decryption, and analysis from the safety of a desk, Shannon was determined to be embedded with Special Operations Forces. A boots-on-the-ground understanding of cultural and regional nuances would prove essential in the dangerous hunt for terrorist enemy leadership.

Preparing for Special Operations missions required that Shannon train alongside some of the military’s most elite service members. Special Operators performed intelligence-gathering and high-risk reconnaissance missions to find the locations of “high-value targets”—terrorist masterminds.

Five of her nine deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria would be in combat zones. On one of her deployments to Iraq, Shannon met Army Special Forces operator Joe Kent, a Green Beret from Portland, Oregon. In 2013, the two reconnected in northern Virginia at a selection course for a Special Missions unit and began dating.

Joe and Shannon married on Christmas Eve, 2014, and would later welcome two sons, Colt and Josh. Always the overachiever, Shannon continued her education at Adler University in Chicago, Illinois, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 2015 and a master’s degree in military psychology in 2018. She was accepted to attend the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences (USUHS) PhD program in March 2018 to attain a doctorate in clinical psychology, with her ultimate goal being to help soldiers suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Both driven to serve their country after the 9/11 attacks, the Kents alternated deployments so that one of them could be home with the boys. In his Army career, Joe would serve in 11 combat deployments. He retired from the Army when their sons were 1 and 3 years old.

Final Mission

In November 2018, Shannon had one more deployment—in support of Operation Inherent Resolve, a multi-national effort to eliminate the terrorist group ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria).

ISIS was a violent Sunni jihadist group that claimed authority over all Muslims worldwide and threatened to take over the Middle East. According to the U.S. State Department, ISIS was a global terrorist threat that engaged in “gross, systematic abuses of human rights…indiscriminate killing and deliberate targeting of civilians, mass executions…kidnapping of civilians, forced displacement of Shia communities and minority groups…killing and maiming of children…along with numerous other atrocities.”

It was Senior Chief Shannon Kent’s job to hunt them down.

On January 16, 2019, Kent was among a small group of special operators in the city of Manbij, Syria, in search of remaining Islamic militant cells that threatened the city and the surrounding region. Blending into their surroundings, their mission that day was to scout out a potential location for meeting a source.

Kent was tasked with finding ISIS cells and their leadership, confirming their locations, and providing that information to Delta Force and SEAL TEAM 6 for strikes with GPS-guided missiles.

Moving through the crowded streets of the city, her team of four was passing by a restaurant where a man wearing a suicide vest had entered. The blast took the lives of eleven Syrian nationals, CW2 Jonathan Farmer (from Boynton Beach, Florida), Ghadir Taher (an American civilian interpreter from East Point, Georgia), Scott Wirtz (former Navy SEAL then with the Defense Intelligence Agency, from St. Louis, Missouri), and Senior Chief Shannon Kent—the 35-year-old mother of two boys. ISIS later claimed responsibility for the attack.

Memorials and Honors

For her final deployment, Senior Chief Kent received the Joint Service Commendation Medal. The citation notes that she “contributed directly to the capture of hundreds of enemy insurgents and severely degraded enemy combat capability.”

Senior Chief Shannon M. Kent was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. (Section 60, Site 11741) in a quiet, private ceremony on February 25, 2019.

Kent was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star. Her citation reads, in part, “She invented methods of incorporating open-source technology into traditional intelligence collection operations, which extended coverage far beyond previously existing regional capabilities. Her achievements will have a lasting and measurable impact in combating enemies of the United States.”

Kent’s name is etched into the black granite of the National Cryptologic Memorial at the NSA Headquarters Complex at Fort Meade.

The U.S. Post Office in her hometown of Pine Plains, New York, was named “Senior Chief Petty Officer Shannon M. Kent Post Office” in her honor.

Joe Kent worked with military reporter and editor Marty Skovlund, Jr. to preserve Shannon’s story in their book, Send Me—The True Story of a Mother at War. In its opening pages, Joe wrote a poignant note explaining that the book was written for their sons, Colt and Josh, “who had their mother taken from them far too early. I want them to understand who Shannon was, what she stood for, and why she was killed fighting in far-flung Manbij, Syria. I want our sons to understand not just their mother’s valor, but also her love for them, for our brothers and sisters in arms, and for our nation.”

Sources
Marty Skovlund Jr. & Joe Kent: Send Me: The True Story of a Mother at War
Naval History and Heritage Command: In Memory of CTIC(IW/EXW) Shannon M. Kent
National Security Agency/Central Security Agency: CTICS Shannon Kent Honored on Cryptologic Memorial Wall
Marty Skovlund Jr., Coffee or Die Magazine: The Legend of Chief Shannon Kent
Foundation for Women Warriors: Shannon M. Kent, Senior Chief Petty Officer, U.S. Navy
The Washington Post, March 22, 2019: War Torn
Stars and Stripes: Navy linguist killed in Syria to be honored on memorial to code-makers and code-breakers
Burial Site: Find a Grave