Platoon members killed in Jordan saw military service as a ladder of life

At a dusty military base in northeastern Jordan, specialist Kennedy Sanders operated bulldozers and road graders. When she had free time, she liked to spend it knitting, or supplement her sneaker habit by shopping online for rare pairs of Nike Dunks, which she let her mother unwrap for her over FaceTime.

She spent many hours joking and hanging out with her friend and platoonmate from their Army Reserve Engineer Unit, Specialist Breonna Moffett, who slept in a nearby rack and hoped to celebrate her homecoming this summer by attending a Nicki Minaj concert live.

The two were killed Sunday, along with another soldier from their unit, Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, in what the Pentagon said was a drone strike by an Iranian-backed militia.

Both specialists were heavy equipment operators doing heavy work in a hostile region. They were also young black women from Georgia who loved hip hop and laughed with friends and the military. And they were representative of the kind of Americans who are increasingly serving in the military today.

Black women represent about 36 percent of all female enlisted men in the military, compared to just 14 percent of the civilian female population, and they have an outsized presence in the highest ranks: More than half of the Army's female sergeant majors are black.

“You think of the military, most people think of men, but in fact African-American women are vastly overrepresented,” said Brenda Moore, a professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Buffalo, who has studied the trend for decades.

The reasons are simple, she said. The military was one of the first major employers to eliminate structural racism from its organization. Although other forms of racism persisted, the military was one of the few places where black women could find open doors and equal opportunities during the civil rights era. Military service comes with benefits that can be rare in civilian jobs, and recruits don't have to know someone or have a degree to be hired.

“The military was seen as a good deal,” Ms. Moore said. “You could make something of yourself, provide for your family and do something honorable.”

Today, women like Specialist Sanders and Specialist Moffett fill the often overlooked jobs in the supply, logistics and medical sectors in support of combat units.

Specialist Moffett, 23, from Savannah, Georgia, enlisted in the Army Reserve in 2019 right out of high school and quickly learned to operate construction equipment like bulldozers and graders. She was the second woman in her family to join the military. Her mother also served.

It's “basically a family tradition,” says Dereima Weaver, a friend since high school.

Mrs. Weaver said her friend was glad she had joined us. “She loved the adventure, and she loved the service,” she said.

In between her obligations in the Army Reserve, Specialist Moffett worked as a civilian home care provider for people with disabilities. United Cerebral Palsy of Georgia Savannah Regional Director Sharon Mitchell described specialist Moffett in a statement as “a very passionate advocate for the people we serve.”

Her platoon mate Specialist Sanders, 24, was from Waycross, a city in the southeastern part of the state where the median household income is half the national average. Her longtime friend Bre Etheridge said in an interview that it was the kind of place where “some people get stuck and can't get out.”

“Others, if they are motivated and want to do big things with their lives, like Kennedy, they go to college or they go into the military,” she said.

Specialist Sanders grew up on a street full of boys and with several brothers, and quickly learned to keep up while playing football and basketball. In high school, she lettered in three sports. She tried college but didn't finish; Back in Waycross, she worked a series of low-paying jobs, including as an assistant at the pharmacy in the small town center.

One of her best friends had joined the Marines and was learning to be a radiologist; After speaking with her, Specialist Sanders decided to enlist in the military. Soon she had health insurance, retirement benefits, and a marketable skill, and earned education benefits to pay for another attempt at college.

“It was an adventure for her too,” her mother, Oneida Oliver-Sanders, said in an interview. “She made lifelong friends and got promoted. She loved it.”

Specialist Sanders was so proud of her service that she visited schools in uniform and spoke to students in Waycross.

“It meant a lot to her,” her mother says. “She wanted the children to see that they had this opportunity too.”

She said her daughter found a kindred spirit in Specialist Moffett. Neither of them, Ms. Oliver-Sanders said, thought much about being in danger.

When they deployed in August, they were initially told they might go to Syria, where the United States has about 900 troops. Specialist Sanders was worried. But they learned they would instead be sent to Tower 22, a small base in Jordan near the Syrian border, which sounded safer.

At the base, Ms. Oliver-Sanders said, her daughter's life seemed routine and uneventful. A few attempted drone strikes on the base came up during phone calls, she said, but mostly it was about their favorite shows on Netflix or the latest pair of sneakers added to Specialist Sanders' collection.

Her military service was about to end and she was thinking about her future. Deploying a remote piece of desert with the occasional drone attack would have deterred some people. But on Saturday, when her mother last spoke to her, Specialist Sanders said she had decided to reenlist in the military.