Cowan, Kay Kipling, COL

Deceased

Photo In Uniform

Service Details

Last Rank
Colonel

Last Service Branch
Infantry

Last Primary MOS
5505-Information Officer

Last MOS Group
Adjutant General (Officer)

Primary Unit
1967-1968, American Forces Information Service

Service Years
1938 - 1968

Last Photo

Personal Details

Home State

Oklahoma

Year of Birth
1914

This Military Service Page was created/owned by the Site Administrator to remember Cowan, Kay Kipling, COL USA(Ret).

Contact Info

Home Town Alexandria, VA	Last Address Altus, OK

Date of Passing Aug 29, 2005
Location of Interment Arlington National Cemetery - Arlington, Virginia	Wall/Plot Coordinates Sec: 64, Site: 4239

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Last Known Activity

Kay Kipling Cowan, 91, a retired Army Colonel and former military assistant to Senator Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), died Aug. 29 at Inova Mount Vernon Hospital of respiratory arrest and complications of bladder cancer. He was a longtime Alexandria resident.

Colonel Cowan was born in Altus, Oklahoma, the youngest of nine children. He graduated from Oklahoma A&M College (now Oklahoma State University) in 1938 and was commissioned in the Army Reserve. He received a bachelor's degree in 1947 and a master's degree in 1948, both in journalism from the University of Missouri at Columbia.

In 1938, he became a reporter and sports editor for the Altus Times-Democrat, a newspaper he had delivered on horseback as a boy. He stayed at the Times-Democrat until June 1941, when he enlisted in the Army. After basic training at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, he underwent ski training in Wisconsin.

A company commander, he led his unit into combat as part of the Normandy invasion on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Wounded six days later while fighting in the French hedgerows, he returned in August to command B Company of the 2nd Division, 23rd Infantry, at Brest, France. He recalled the early days of the Battle of the Bulge in written accounts for his children: "My company was in fierce fights for several days holding off several German attacks, including tanks, with practically no antitank weapons, no artillery support and no air support -- cold, wet and snowing!"

Colonel Cowan stayed in the Army after the war and served as a military observer supporting the United Nations peacekeeping force in the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan. After completing advanced infantry and paratrooper training at Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1952, at 38, he served as secretary of the general staff at 1st Army headquarters on Governor's Island in New York. He also was chief of the public affairs division in Germany and commanding officer of the 2nd Battle Group, based in Bamberg, Germany.

He was deputy director of Armed Forces Radio and Television Service from 1962 to 1967 and deputy director of the Office of Information in the office of the secretary of defense in 1967-68. He retired in 1968.

His military awards included the Legion of Merit, the Purple Heart and two awards of the Bronze Star.

In 1968, he became military assistant to Thurmond, a position that allowed him to combine his devotion to the Army and concern for the welfare of its soldiers with his interest in journalism. During more than two decades on the senator's staff, he helped write legislation that benefited service personnel, including the Survivor Benefit Plan. He retired again in 1991.

Colonel Cowan was a member of Grace Episcopal Church in Alexandria. His pastimes included tennis, golf and bridge.

Survivors include his wife of 65 years, Maxine E. Cowan of Alexandria; four children, Nancy C. Joseph of San Antonio, Carol A. Daly of North Augusta, S.C., Carmen J. Fielding of Fairfax City and Mark S. Cowan of Columbia, S.C.; nine grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.

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World War II
From Month/Year December / 1941	To Month/Year September / 1945
Description Overview of World War II World War II killed more people, involved more nations, and cost more money than any other war in history. Altogether, 70 million people served in the armed forces during the war, and 17 million combatants died. Civilian deaths were ever greater. At least 19 million Soviet civilians, 10 million Chinese, and 6 million European Jews lost their lives during the war. World War II was truly a global war. Some 70 nations took part in the conflict, and fighting took place on the continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe, as well as on the high seas. Entire societies participated as soldiers or as war workers, while others were persecuted as victims of occupation and mass murder. World War II cost the United States a million causalities and nearly 400,000 deaths. In both domestic and foreign affairs, its consequences were far-reaching. It ended the Depression, brought millions of married women into the workforce, initiated sweeping changes in the lives of the nation's minority groups, and dramatically expanded government's presence in American life. The War at Home & Abroad On September 1, 1939, World War II started when Germany invaded Poland. By November 1942, the Axis powers controlled territory from Norway to North Africa and from France to the Soviet Union. After defeating the Axis in North Africa in May 1941, the United States and its Allies invaded Sicily in July 1943 and forced Italy to surrender in September. On D-Day, June 6, 1944, the Allies landed in Northern France. In December, a German counteroffensive (the Battle of the Bulge) failed. Germany surrendered in May 1945. The United States entered the war following a surprise attack by Japan on the U.S. Pacific fleet in Hawaii. The United States and its Allies halted Japanese expansion at the Battle of Midway in June 1942 and in other campaigns in the South Pacific. From 1943 to August 1945, the Allies hopped from island to island across the Central Pacific and also battled the Japanese in China, Burma, and India. Japan agreed to surrender on August 14, 1945 after the United States dropped the first atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Consequences: 1. The war ended Depression unemployment and dramatically expanded government's presence in American life. It led the federal government to create a War Production Board to oversee conversion to a wartime economy and the Office of Price Administration to set prices on many items and to supervise a rationing system. 2. During the war, African Americans, women, and Mexican Americans founded new opportunities in industry. But Japanese Americans living on the Pacific coast were relocated from their homes and placed in internment camps. The Dawn of the Atomic Age In 1939, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt, warning him that the Nazis might be able to build an atomic bomb. On December 2, 1942, Enrico Fermi, an Italian refugee, produced the first self-sustained, controlled nuclear chain reaction in Chicago. To ensure that the United States developed a bomb before Nazi Germany did, the federal government started the secret $2 billion Manhattan Project. On July 16, 1945, in the New Mexico desert near Alamogordo, the Manhattan Project's scientists exploded the first atomic bomb. It was during the Potsdam negotiations that President Harry Truman learned that American scientists had tested the first atomic bomb. On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress, released an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan. Between 80,000 and 140,000 people were killed or fatally wounded. Three days later, a second bomb fell on Nagasaki. About 35,000 people were killed. The following day Japan sued for peace. President Truman's defenders argued that the bombs ended the war quickly, avoiding the necessity of a costly invasion and the probable loss of tens of thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives. His critics argued that the war might have ended even without the atomic bombings. They maintained that the Japanese economy would have been strangled by a continued naval blockade, and that Japan could have been forced to surrender by conventional firebombing or by a demonstration of the atomic bomb's power. The unleashing of nuclear power during World War II generated hope of a cheap and abundant source of energy, but it also produced anxiety among large numbers of people in the United States and around the world.