The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Send Me The True Story of a Mother at War By Marty Skovlund, Jr., Joe Kent

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

Send Me The True Story of a Mother at War By Marty Skovlund, Jr., Joe Kent https://amzn.to/44xpQRI The extraordinary story of American special operator and trailblazer Shannon Kent, who hunted high value targets on classified missions in the most dangerous locales on earth while trying to balance her life as a wife and mother. Of the 1.3 million active-duty service members in the US military, only a tiny fraction are selected as “operators.” Shannon Kent was one of the first women to serve at this level and was widely recognized as one of the best. Shannon served as a Navy cryptologic technician, responsible for signals intelligence and electronic warfare, but her proficiency with language set her apart. She was assigned to a unit so secretive that its name can’t even be printed here, where she worked clandestinely to hunt the most wanted terrorists in the world. Send Me is Shannon’s heroic life story, revealing the truth of both her work and the challenges she faced while trying to raise a family with her husband Joe, himself a Special Forces soldier. He and Shannon met in a war zone, their love forged during a special operations training course, their dedication spanning multiple combat deployments and the birth of their two boys. It is the legacy of an extraordinary woman who rose to the apex of the military, working with the most elite forces in the world, lifting the veil from the life of a Special Forces family to share their duty, sacrifice, and humanity.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. I'm host Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Big Show. We certainly appreciate you guys. When every lady sings, that makes it official. Welcome to the Big Show.

For 16 years, over 2,000 episodes, we've been bringing you the Chris Voss Show. And, man, my back hurts. Welcome to the show. Refer to the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Voss, Chris Voss 1 on the TikTokity and all those crazy places on the internet. Today, we have two amazing authors on the show with their latest, hottest book. It just came onto the bookshelves on May 7th.

Actually, it's out in four and more days, so it's going to be hot when it gets here. Damn it, I can smell the print from here. It's the latest story called Send Me the True Story of a Mother at War by Marty Scoveland, Jr. and Joe Kent. They're going to be both on the show with us talking to us about their book. Marty is the editor-in-chief of Task and Purpose, a military news and culture publication. He's a former Army Ranger and an experienced conflict reporter who has reported on assignment from afghanistan iraq and ukraine in addition to embedding with the u.s military around the world joe kent is shannon kent's husband and father of their two children over the course of his 22 military year career he served as an army ranger green beret and other classified special operation

units that he can't tell you about or he's having to kill you. No, I'm just kidding. I made that up at the end. Welcome to the show, Joe and Marty. How are you? Great. There you go. Yeah, I'm doing great.

Thanks for having us. Are any of those classified missions you've been on the type that you'd have to kill me if you told me about them? Not really. I mean, if I told you about them, I'd probably just get in a bunch of trouble and have to give money back. So I wasn't quite that cool. Don't want to do't that don't want to do that don't want to do that yeah yeah i think that only happens in movies maybe i don't know uh anyway uh so guys congratulations on the new book uh welcome the show uh give us any dot coms where you want people to find you on the interwebs uh send me anywhere you buy books, just the word, send me, we'll get you there. It's on Amazon. You can find me at Joe Kent, one six J and one nine on pretty much every

single social media platform. Yeah. And yeah, biggest thing, go out, pick up a copy of the book, pick up a copy for your friend, for your family members. But yeah, I'm on all the normal social media platforms, and it's just my name, Marty Scolbin Jr. There you go. So guys, give me a 30,000 overview of what the book is and what's inside. So the book is the story of Shannon Kent's life. She was killed fighting ISIS in Syria in 2019. She was killed in her fifth combat deployment.

The book kind of goes back and tells the tale of how Shannon ended up in the military, her childhood growing up, some of her early deployments. I wrote the portions that were specifically about our relationship, how we met. We kind of met under some, I guess, unusual circumstances. Usual for us, for people in our line of work, but unusual, I think, for most folks. And then how we formed a family together, how Shannon loved our family, and then just the trials and tribulations that we faced with both of us being in the clandestine world and deploying to fight on behalf of our country.

And then, tragically, everybody sort of knows how the book ends. It ends with Shannon's tragic death. But the book is a tribute to her. I really set out to write it initially for our two young sons. They were one and three when she was killed. So they can get to know their mom a little bit better. When they're old enough to fully understand, they can get to know her beyond the stories that I tell them and their grandmother and grandfather and aunts and uncles tell them. But then also we really, through Shannon, we wanted to tell the story of a lot of other women

veterans who fought in the global war on terror, a lot of intelligence professionals who fought in the war on terror, who really haven't had their story told yet. Um, so that was kind of our, our intent and the reason why we wrote the book. There you go, Marty. Yeah. And, you know, just to give Joe a little bit of credit here too, he, um, uh, you know, as shannon's husband i like to liken them to a real life mr and mrs smith as the uh as the movie was you know both of them an incredibly patriotic family did so much on behalf of our country and uh i i think that this book uh like joe said a tribute to shannon but also a great example of how uh two great amer Americans were able to go out and do great things on behalf of their nation while raising two young boys, while starting a family, while maintaining and growing a marriage.

And it all just tragically came to an end too soon. But we've got that all and wanted to capture that all in this book. There you go. A story of heroism. Evidently, she was pretty special too. Out of the 1.3 million active service members in the US military, only a fraction are selected as operators. And she was one of the first women to serve at that level. Yeah. Shannon kind of cut her teeth at a time when women technically weren't really even allowed into special operations or technically even allowed to fight on the front lines. Now, if you fought in the war on terror,

you know, there really was no well-defined front lines for the most part. So a lot of women who had, you know, benign sounding jobs found themselves in really intensive combat, but Shannon knew she had a knack for languages. She volunteered to study and learn Arabic, and then she volunteered for deployment and then just never stopped volunteering. She really had an ability to understand the Iraqi dialect, which is actually even more complicated than standard Arabic. And then she volunteered for a deployment and then just never stopped volunteering. She really had an ability to understand the Iraqi dialect, which is actually even more complicated than standard Arabic. And then also to build relationships with Iraqis and in particular, Iraqi women, but also a lot of Iraqi men that made her a pretty potent human intelligence collector. Women are often overlooked, but especially in a society like the Middle East, women are overlooked, but they observe and they have access to a lot of things that men simply don't. So through Shannon's ability, she kind of

earned a slot within special operations before there was actually technically a slot for her. I mean, there was a couple other women that were doing this as well, but Shannon got her foot in the door that way. And then by the time the Navy SEAL teams and the special operations task forces were letting women formally be a part of them. She was already in that pipeline. So she had already been on, you know, four combat deployments by the time the memo was finally signed in 2014 that opened up all jobs in the military to women. There you go. Now, we had Clarissa Ward from CNN on the show a couple years back for her book.

And one of her issues with being in Iraq and, and different, um, Middle Eastern areas is she's a very tall and very blonde, very white woman, uh, skin wise.

And so her, uh, her fleshing in with the, uh, with the locals and being able to, you know, be, be sometimes undercover was,

it was pretty troublesome because, you know, the way she looked. It looks like maybe she was, you know, had the blonde hair and white skin. Did that ever be an issue for her? You know, I think, sorry, I was going to jump in. You know, I think one of the disadvantages that somebody like Clarissa Ward had was she's got a TV crew following her around. That's true, too. And she's really tall. That doesn't really help you blend in, right?

She's really tall, too. Yeah. I think in Shannon's case, she was a master at blending in in the most advantageous way for the mission. So that could be, yes, going in and putting on some of the traditional headdresses and things like that, that maybe would obscure her nationality a little bit, but also in the case of a lot of times just blending in with the normal troops or the troops that were regularly conducting patrols. So there's a couple of, I think when people think about blending in, in an area, there's a couple of different ways to do that. And Shannon, I think

was great at bringing that, but Joe can talk much more about that. Yeah, I mean, Shannon understood her operational environment. That's usually one of the things that we teach special operators is kind of understand where you are, know the culture. Her understanding the culture and language, I think, was really key. I mean, she was blonde, redheadish, and, you know, very Caucasian. So she would stick out, but I would as well. But I did a lot of stuff behind enemy lines as well. So as long and you know very Caucasian so she would stick out but I would as well but I did a lot of stuff behind enemy lines as well so as long as you know generally how to dress you know the cultural norms you know how to act Shannon really would capitalize on the fact that Middle Eastern women are ignored it's almost polite to ignore women in the Middle East so she rode in

the backseat of a taxi with two men up front you know you're not supposed to look in the back if you can see it's clearly a woman back there. And so she really capitalized on that. And then her ability to speak, she had an ability to understand dialects and replicate accents. I mean, there's a lot of native Iraqi speakers who really generally thought that Shannon at least had one Iraqi parent, and that she had grown up speaking some dialect of Iraqi Arabic. So that would tend to get her past any scrutiny she got was just her ability to throw out a couple of key slang phrases that even your average Arabic speaker just wouldn't know unless they were from that part of Iraq. That's pretty savvy. So what motivated her?

What motivated her to want to join the military and serve our nation? What was her motivation, especially for getting in some of the deeper parts of the military to, you know, work behind enemy lines and being in some of the secretive things that she was involved in? You know, 9-11 was the catalyst for her to join the military. She's a New Yorker. Both her father and her uncle were ground zero first responders. Father's a career New York State trooper. Uncle was a New York City firefighter. So after the attacks and those guys were down there working for 24 hours straight, her and her younger brother, who's a year younger than her,

both went and did what a lot of young men and women from our generation did. They found a recruiter and they said, hey, put me in. I want to go fight. Shannon had taught herself French. She had taught herself Spanish. She was fascinated with languages, fascinated with cultures, had the wars never happened. I think she still may have found her way into the foreign service, like in the State Department or, you know, being an international correspondent or something like that. So that was already her focus.

But she knew that she could contribute to the fight by learning Arabic. And so she volunteered to learn Arabic. And that was really her foot in the door. And I think once she was there, she said, hey, you know, if I'm going to join the military, I might as well go serve with the best of the best. I want to be in a place where I can use my skills to their utmost ability, which I think is kind of a common thread for most people who find themselves in special operations. You want to serve at the tip of the spear. And once she saw, especially with the way that the war was going, that it was very much a war ran by intelligence. Could you actually hunt down the bad guys? And that took a lot of understanding of not just intelligence,

but understand the culture and the language. She realized that she could be, you know, value added to that. And so that's, she just wanted to continue to strive for, you know, to be at the most elite place that she could be.

Any thoughts, Marty? Yeah. I think, you know, in the book, we get really into the weeds on this. I'm like,

how do you actually, the very first chapter is called hunting humans, right i i think a lot of people who look at shannon first blush it's like this nice sweet looking woman who you know looks very much like a mother you know um but she was absolutely the effects that she could bring to the battlefield were uh lethal and had strategic consequences um you know and we get into the weeds on some of that to the battlefield were lethal and had strategic consequences. You know, and we get into the weeds on some of that in the book. I mean, we talk about the there's this targeting methodology that the Special Operations Command kind of perfected over the years in Iraq and Afghanistan called F3EAD. Find, fix, finish, exploit, analyze, disseminate.

Shannon basically was a master at five out of those six and pretty pretty dang competent at the sixth one um and uh she just i think it was so rare to find somebody like that in those theaters even back then where it was you know i remember on deployments we it wouldn't be uncommon to find women as interrogators or in different sort of intelligence roles. But so rarely would you find somebody, I don't think I ever encountered somebody that was doing what Shannon was doing in all the different areas of intelligence and special operations. There you go. With,

with now the story, part of it is wrapped with you, Joe. You know, you guys meet each other. Tell us how you guys met each other and developed a relationship. Well, we initially met for the first time in 2007 during the height of the Iraq surge. I actually took a briefing from Shannon about the location of a terrorist that we were both hunting.

So she actually had a methodology worked out of her own where she was kind of combining signals intelligence and human intelligence and her understanding of the culture and the language to really draw a bead on a lot of guys that we were having a hard time tracking down. So I found myself getting briefed by Shannon on the location of a terrorist leader that I was after. I spent about 10, 15 minutes with her and I was like, wow, there's something to this girl. I'm going to come back and talk to her later. Big mistake. I should have made my move right then and there. I didn't. I was focused on going out and hunting bad guys. I didn't see her again. She actually ended up moving on and going to a different assignment

right after that. But I didn't see her again for another several years. It wasn't until 2013 that we both ended up getting selected for one of those secretive special operations units. And we had a moment where we ran into each other and we both remembered each other and and from then we started our you know i guess uh courting and dating process which was which you know took about uh eight months to a year but pretty early on we we felt like we had both found each other again and and you know it was kind of unspoken between the two of us that we were gonna get married and start a family whatever things slowed down enough to make that happen and eventually you did. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Marty.

Yeah, I was going to say, you know, one of my favorite parts in all this that really exemplifies the odd courtship that Joe and Shannon had was Joe receiving a text message at one point while he was deployed from a special forces friend of his of, hey, just kidnap your wife and threw her in the back of a trunk. She's doing great. Or it was something to that effect, right, Joe? And it and it's just you know for joe just another day at work of course shannon is getting into something like that you know she was going through some sort of training uh that led to that text but it just goes to show i think for anybody else any other

husband out there that would receive a text like that about their spouse be extremely alarming um just another day in the life in the Kent household. There you go. So you guys, you guys develop a relationship. How hard is it to do that in the military when you're both in the combat theater? I mean, I know of relations, I have friends in the military who have, you know, a wife at home here in the States that isn't in the military. How hard is that to develop and keep and maintain, basically? Because, you know, you're both sometimes probably serving in different locales, etc., etc.

You know, for us, it worked well because we were both in the same line of work and we could be pretty upfront with each other. We didn't have to kind of, you know, speak in generalities. We didn't have to necessarily, like like be less than honest with our spouse, which a lot of guys and girls who are in the intelligence field, they do have to kind of deceive or not tell the full truth to their spouses. They can't be forthright about what they're doing, where they're going, why they're doing it. And for both of us, it was refreshing to just be able to be completely honest and say, Hey, I'm going here for this purpose. You know, and then, you know, like Marty talked about, I could get updates when Shannon was in

some high intensive training. It's like, I can actually have a friend email me on classified systems and say like, Hey, we just kidnapped you, kidnapped your wife as part of the prisoner of war exercises. Like she's doing all right. You know, just us being in the same community really worked well for us and I, for how intense my life was at that time and how intense her life was. I just don't think it would have worked out with somebody who wasn't fully immersed in that world. It came with its own stresses, especially once we started having kids. It definitely made it more challenging, and Shannon ended up, I'd say, shouldering a lot of the burdens of my constant deployments alone because I was off deploying and doing things. And she was at home working a full-time job at NSA,

which was providing critical support to warfighters down range, helping find bad guys so that we could kill them. But at the same time, she was either pregnant or pregnant with one kid at home and having to balance all that as well. So definitely it worked for us, but it was pretty challenging at the same time. So, yeah, you have two kids during the midst of that is that did that happen in the field or that happened uh at uh uh during off times now times at military bases how did how did you juggle that i mean we were both living um in the

in the washington dc area uh she stayed home for all the pregnancies. I actually was deployed for both of the pregnancies, made it home for the births both times. So that worked out really, really well. It wasn't until Shannon's final deployment that she actually had to deploy away from the kids. And that's, I mean, she attempted to move her career in a different direction. We can get into that if you want. That's a big part of the book as well. But yeah, so she had actually had sort of taken some time off of her career from deploying. She was still working stateside during the period. Our sons are less than two years apart. So it was about a two-year period

where we were making our family basically as quickly as possible. There you go. Marty? Yeah, I don't know how they did it. You know, one of the things that I took away from, you know, the parts of the book that we're talking about their home life and how they had to juggle everything is I don't under, it seems Shannon had a 25th hour in the day that the rest of us didn't have. I mean, when we talk about the important work she was doing at work and then, you know, the stuff at home with the kids and on the family front, you know, she was also running marathons. She was also doing this incredible artwork. Joe's got an incredible dining room table right now

that has a beautiful mosaic inlay that Shannon worked on, you know, the gardening, the, you know, she had her bachelor's degree and her graduate degree, as well as started the process for her going into a doctorate program, all while all this other stuff was still going on. I mean, I just, I mean, any one of those things on their own is a kind of a full time job, you know, nevermind the fact that she did have a very full-time job, you know, as a part of one of these, you know, secretive special operations units. And I just, I don't, I don't know how she did it even now, having looked at this for all these years. Let's get into her trying to transfer her her career and then she ends up on a deployment that ends up being her last deployment it sounds that sounds like a bit of a tragedy in that

in that uh you know for me i mean what's the is it is it hunting for private ryan you know the the policy that the u.s had to make that you, we can't have the whole family at war in case somebody, in case the last son dies. I mean, it seems like this is something, putting both parents in a theater of war is kind of a bad idea, but I don't know. I'm not, how does the military handle this? Well, the military technically won't deploy both parents at the same time.

There's waivers for all that in case there's like a need for it. When I deployed at the same time. There's waivers for all that in case there's a need for it. When I deployed at the same time as Shannon, I had already retired from the military. I was in the CIA then. So that was mostly my choice, actually. I talk about that in the book. Deploying has become so routine to us that it was just like, well, I'll just go over for 45 days.

It won't be a big deal. Boy, was I wrong. But Shannon attempted, once we had kids, to kind of shift her career in a direction where she could still serve and do something impactful, but at the same time, have a more regular, consistent job where she wouldn't have to deploy. She'd be home with the kids. She had a passion for psychology.

On her fourth deployment to Afghanistan, she was assigned to a to a seal team and the uh the commander of that seal team navy seal very well respected committed suicide on that deployment uh and that hit the the entire task force really hard hit shannon really hard but she realized then that hey we have a real crisis of mental health a lot of guys are isolated these these repeated deployments because at that point i think we were 15 years or so into the war. She was like, these repeated deployments are really taking a toll on a lot of people and

nobody's seeking out help. And so she, just being Shannon, looking for a place where she can be impactful. She got her bachelor's in psychology, her master's in psychology. She took the grad school exams and was accepted into a PhD program that's ran by the Navy, which is pretty challenging to get into. They only accept a handful of people every single year because it basically gives you a PhD program that's ran by the Navy, which is pretty challenging to get into. They only accept a handful of people every single year because it basically gives you a PhD. They commission you as an officer. Shannon was on the enlisted side at the time. But when you go to go from an enlisted program to an officer program, the military holds you to a session standards as

if you had just walked off the street. To stay in the military, you just have to meet retention standards. And that's the military realizing that you probably got some wear and tear on you. So even though Shannon had been accepted into this program because she had had cancer while I was deployed to Iraq, and she didn't tell me she just had the cancer cut out of her thyroid, and she had returned to duty fully fit to serve, fully fit to deploy, technically she was ineligible to become an officer. So the catch 22 was that she was fit to deploy to combat, but not to go sit in a classroom. So, you know, despite her best efforts,

she was sent on her final deployment as opposed to being in a PhD program. And do you guys mind covering what happened in the final appointment? Or do we want to save that as a, maybe we want to tease that out as people really want to pick up the book to get the full story. You know, I think that it's, you know, the news stories are out there and you know, that last deployment, it was definitely you know, basically the ISIS caliphate had been defeated, but they were still

rooting out and trying to find the leadership and Shannon was very much a part of that. They had actually, you know, but they were still rooting out and trying to find the leadership. And Shannon was very much a part of that. They had actually, you know, President Trump at that point had actually wanted to pull people out of Syria right before that deployment happened. So there's a couple of different sort of off-ramps that could have happened for Shannon there. But she ended up on that deployment doing her job at a very high level. And, you know, one of the missions that she

went on doing a, you know, uh, uh, a meet with somebody, um, you know, I kind of undercover of a different patrol and, um, just that they had been targeted by a, uh, ISIS, uh, bomber who just basically walked up right in the middle of them and um uh you know set the bomb off um and it uh not only killed shannon but three other americans um chief john farmer uh scotty who's a former navy seal who's working for the dia at the time and then gadir tahir who's a american syrian who was over working as a interpreter and then uh i think it's about 18 other syrians uh that were um both from the syrian defense forces as. And then I think it was about 18 other Syrians that were both from the Syrian Defense Forces

as well as locals there. So it was a major explosion. And sort of what we get into there is, you know, one of my hopes with the book is that people got to know Shannon so well during the book and almost maybe feel like they did know her. So when we get to that part of the book that they maybe feel even one one-thousand pain and loss that joe and his family felt and um

you know and this is you know some of the parts that i won't spoil is you know they um there was a herculean effort to to get um both the fallen and the injured out of that, out of that spot. And, and then, you know, we kind of look at the ripple effect that Shannon's death had throughout the military around the world. And it was, you know, and again, I won't go into detail. People can read the book, but you know, some of the hardest parts to read, and I've been through this thing hundreds of times at this point,

and I still get choked up when i read about um joe finding out while joe was deployed and and then you know some of the reactions months later and some of the tough conversations that joe had with his boys you know um this is a lot of this book we kept it fairly positive through a lot of the book and talked about a lot of the high points of shane and she's you know very human person but man the when we get towards the end of the book it's there um there absolutely is a real sense of loss there you go joe yeah i mean uh you kind of go into if you if you pick up the book you you sort of know how it ends tragically um so the the final chapter um it's probably, you know, tragically, it's the least climatic. You know how what happens.

But, yeah, the notification process for me was a lot different than I think your typical spouse. I didn't get a knock on the door. I was deployed as well. I was kind of out in the middle of nowhere in another war zone, not in Syria, but somewhere else. And the process of getting back to the States, having to make the decision to call Shannon's parents and let her know, as opposed to them getting blindsided by a, you know, a uniformed service member coming to their door and knocking on the door. Yeah, that's, that's all in there. And then, you know, how we discussed it with the kids going forward.

There you go. And then I love how the book is a homage to her and her life. It sounds like she did a lot of things. I mean, just some of the things you listed. I mean, she does sound like she had 24 hours in a day or more. I mean, it's extraordinary. And the people who serve in our military, no matter what happens, it is a sacrifice to serve our country. And we should always honor that and support it.

What do you hope people come away from when they read the book? Well, I hope they get a sense of who Shannon was, that she was not just a warrior, not just a trailblazer. It's great to read all that, too. And I want to make sure that she gets the credit that she deserves. And then so do a lot of the other females who serve in similar roles, but also just an understanding of who she was and how much she loved her family, how much she loved the guys and girls that she served with in the military, and just how much she loved our country. And just really the true story of how long these wars have gone on for and how long a small group of people fought these wars. I think that's another thing you can take away from this book. This wasn't just one

deployment that she did. I mean, she was killed on her fifth deployment. Her entire adult life had been geared towards this. She was very much a professional warrior, just like me and so many of my friends. And so when people read this, and they also at the same time are reading about Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, and his evolution at the same time, they can really get a grasp of just how long of a conflict this has been and how it's really been fought by a small group of people in our country. So I know people appreciate the military. And so if you want to just get a better understanding of the depth of our our military i think that's a an important thing you can get from the book marty yeah again i i want people to experience and you know get to know shannon kent and then experience just a little bit of that loss that happened but you know on a more

positive note i hope that there's a lot of people that are inspired by her story and the way that she lived her life and the ferocity uh ferocity in which she approached every goal that she had, um, every objective she wanted to complete. You know, I've got two young daughters. Um, my youngest daughter, her middle name is after is Shannon after Shannon Kent. This book is going to be required reading for both of them. And, um, you know, so it's, it's inspiration, but then also I think that there's a lot of women who have served on the front lines again long before they were ever technically allowed to who don't have a good way to explain what they did um a lot of people don't believe them there's uh one person i

was just talking to the other day who uh literally had to dig up um an award citation she had received for her support to a Marine platoon in Afghanistan because her local VA didn't believe that she'd experienced what she'd experienced. So she had to find the actual write up as proof. You know, that's something that Joe and I typically aren't going to run into. And, you know, it's beyond just the women. It's the intelligence community as a whole. At Shannon's memorial service, there was, and I'm kind of paraphrasing here, but one of the speakers at her memorial

service said, you know, a lot of people think that us cryptologists are, you know, sitting in a windowless room, toiling away, you know, trying to decrypt things or translate things, you know, far from the front lines. If that were true, we wouldn't be here today you know um so there's a lot of folks that just have been kind of i guess underrepresented as it pertains to the storytelling of the war on terror and maybe this book is i don't want to be so egotistical say hey this is like the black hawk down for the intel folks but you know hopefully it goes a little bit towards that goal of making sure people from Shannon's community are represented in this book. There you go. I mean, everyone's life is valuable, especially those who serve and do the sacrifice for our country and what we do. I think somewhere in our most recent mentality,

it seems we're disaffected sometimes by these losses or the sacrifices that military people make. Maybe it's because deaths aren't reported so much highly in the news, maybe anymore. I know there was a fall-off during the Afghanistan war where they just didn't really report stuff very much it seemed in the news what was going on a lot of our news has seemed to move to more local stuff than than uh international and so i think the view our our views become more

nationalistic but you know stories like this highlight the need to to recognize the sacrifices that people make in the military and a lot of a lot of people don't seem to understand we've had a lot of military people on on the show that have talked about you know their stuff and what they can talk about and people don't realize how much there are stories that we don't hear about where you guys stand in between the most evil people in the world who want to hurt us. And a lot of those stories never get told because they're classified. But they're there.

And there's a lot of times where our safety and our security and going about our daily life, you guys stand in the brink between those evil people and us. So those are my thoughts. If you have any comments, folks, as we go out, or how to tell people how to pick up the book wherever fine books are sold. Yes, send me wherever you buy books. It's on Amazon. It's on all the major platforms. It'll be actually on shelves on May 7th in your local bookstore

if you prefer to buy that way. We did an audio version as well that Marty narrated. So if you, if you're an audible person and you like it, you like that format and you can get that to you. So send me anywhere you buy books. There you go. Uh, Marty. Yeah. Um, I, like I said, pick up a book for yourself, pick up a book for your family members, you know, uh, share it around. Um, I've had a few different people that I've, uh, you know, sent a copy out to, and they said, well, I've already pre-ordered it. Yeah. Take the book I'm giving you that one that you pre-ordered, gift it to somebody else. We want this story to be

shared as widely as we possibly can. Um, you know, uh, I want Shannon Kent's name to be a household name. Um, we, we should, uh, We should be seeing her as one of the notable figures to come out of the war on terror and as a great American that is remembered long after her death. And this book is just the start of that. That's just the first thing that we can do to sort of record her life, her achievements

and what she did. And so the more people that read this, the more people that talk about her, her, um, her life, her achievements and, and what she did. And, um, you know, so the more people that read this, the more people that talk about her, the more her memory stays alive. And I think that's the most important thing we can do in the best way we can say thanks. There you go. Uh, well, it's been an honor to have you guys on the show. Thank you for your service. Thanks for, uh, writing the book and getting it out there and giving her a memorial

that she definitely deserves and hopefully people will pick it up. Folks, you can pick up the book May 7th, 2024. Send me the true story of a mother at war. Thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com,

fortuneschristmaslinkedin.com, fortuneschristmas, chrisfast1, the TikTokity, all those crazy places we're on the Internet. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe.

We'll see you next time. And that should have us out, gentlemen.