Barry F. Kowalski (Class of 1966) oral history and papers relating to the Vietnam War (AMS.1U.K5)

Biographical/Historical note

Barry Frank Kowalski (b. 1944, August 26) is the son of Frank Kowalski, a liberal Democratic former United States Representative from Connecticut, and Helen Amelia Kowalski. He attended high school in the Washington D.C. and northern Virginia area, and participated in track in field. He specifically wanted to attend an Ivy League school and enrolled at Brown in 1962 (Class of 1966). His recollections of Brown are more of the social life than the academic life. His dorm was next to the Psi Upsilon fraternity. He and his roommate, Duncan Higgins became friends with some of the “Psi U’s” and ended up becoming a “Psi U” where Derek Chesebrough (a Brown personality and friend who was killed in Vietnam) was its president.

In the summer between his Junior and Senior years, he worked for Hubert Humphrey, Vice President of the United States in Humphrey’s office on Capitol Hill. Kowalski felt increasingly sure he wanted a career in politics after Brown. After graduating he went back to work for Humphrey.

While Barry had always supported the military, he was very much opposed to the Vietnam War from its beginning. The combination of a discomfort with the draft, disinterest in graduate school, and desire to carry on his family’s tradition of military service led Barry to join the Marines in August 1966. He attended the Officer Candidate School in Quantico, Virginia before receiving his commission. He wanted a non-combat position as a transport, communications, or supply officer—Military Operations Specialists (MOS), reasoning that if he trained as a marine officer and then requested an MOS position, in all likelihood he would get it. His training ended in April 1967, he was married in June and he and his wife lived together in the DC area. He then learned he and his whole OCS class were given commissions as infantry officers. Going into battle had never been part of Barry’s philosophy, and the news was devastating. Barry seriously considered fleeing to Canada with his wife. After reflection on this, he felt it was easier to be sent off to war than take a principled position, desert and become an exile in another country.

He was in Vietnam in November 1967. He remembers the flight to Vietnam. He was 22 years old, unsupportive of the war, and afraid of dying. He felt that his lack of commitment to the war would compromise his ability to be an infantry officer, but was forced to accept he had no other option. In November of 1967, Barry was stationed along the DMZ in what was known as the Leatherneck Square (the countryside of Con Thein, Gio Linh, Alpha 3, and Cam Lo Bridge). He was a Lieutenant of the 3rd Platoon in Lima Company—of the 3rd Battalion—the 3rd Marines in command of 40 men. He found himself in the situation of simultaneously giving orders to kill people and giving orders to try to keep people alive.

Occasionally his platoon would retreat to combat rear -- where the division and regimental headquarters were -- for a few days of rest and recuperation (R and R). Most often they were in a firebase out in the field or on patrol. During Barry’s period of service, lieutenants were especially vulnerable. Of the twenty-plus lieutenants in his battalion, Barry was the only one who wasn’t killed or wounded. Barry was promoted to Executive Officer, the second in command after the company commander. “In a combat situation the executive officer really has nothing to do, no command responsibility,” Barry explains. “You only take over if something happens to the company commander and your main job is to take care of the casualties.”

Barry’s platoon was outside the reach of the Tet Offensive in January 1968. He was on the DMZ in constant combat but far from the targeted population centers. He did not learn of the Tet Offensive and the fall of Hue and Saigon until he went to Hawaii on R and R, meeting his wife there. Then, after six months in combat, Barry got sick and was sent to the hospital ship “Sanctuary” for a month. During that time, his wife gave birth to a daughter, Kelly, on Father’s day 1968. After recovering, he returned to the field as an advisor to the Revolutionary Development Cadre, a counter-Vietcong effort to politicize the countryside. He advised a Vietnamese major in charge of 1500 people. Barry survived his tour and in the summer of 1968 was stationed at Camp Lejeune, N.C. for his second and final year of service. He still had doubts about the war and would take his position against the war in arguments at parties where someone would be defending it. Eventually Barry learned to carry Army applications. “I would pull it out and hand it to the guy and say, ‘You think the war is so great? Join up.’ And then you would hear somebody’s college they had to finish, or his wife, or his family obligation or some damn thing—excuse that he had for not going and I would look him in the eye and tell him that he was a coward. If he felt that way he ought to be over there fighting, not making someone else go fight the war for him. And that’s why I went, to be able to say that.”

In 1970, after finishing his service contract and preparing to begin law school, he and his first wife divorced. In the fall of 1972, Barry worked as Co-Director of Veterans for [George] McGovern during his 1972 Presidential campaign against Richard Nixon. Barry had intended to go into politics, but working on the McGovern campaign disillusioned him.

In 1973, Barry earned his J.D. from Catholic University Law School and was offered a high-paying job at a large law firm. Since 1980, he has been a lawyer for the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. He prosecutes federal crimes where someone has, in the course of the crime, interfered with the constitutional rights of another person. He has helped prosecute some very high profile cases including the Rodney King beating and the last Department of Justice investigation of the Martin Luther King Assassination. Barry enjoys his three daughters (Kelly, from his first marriage, and two daughters from his second marriage, ages 9 and 14 at time of the 2011 interview). “If I hadn’t gone into the Marine Corps I would have been a hippie,” Barry says. “I am a very unconventional lawyer. I am a lawyer who prosecutes criminal civil rights cases. I don’t prosecute drug dealers and bank robbers, violent crime and corporate crime. I prosecute those who violate the United States Constitution and commit crimes in the course of it. So that’s a rather hippie-like kind of lawyer I guess, right?...although I do it in a grey suit.”