Doris "Lucki" Ilda Allen (1927–2024) was an American

physical education Physical education, often abbreviated to Phys Ed. or P.E., is a subject taught in schools around the world. It is usually taught during primary and secondary education, and encourages psychomotor learning by using a play and movement explora ...

teacher from

El Paso El Paso (; "the pass") is a city in and the seat of El Paso County in the western corner of the U.S. state of Texas. The 2020 population of the city from the U.S. Census Bureau was 678,815, making it the 23rd-largest city in the U.S., the ...

who joined the US Army in its

Women's Army Corps The Women's Army Corps (WAC) was the women's branch of the United States Army. It was created as an auxiliary unit, the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) on 15 May 1942 and converted to an active duty status in the Army of the United State ...

(WAC) in 1950. She became a military intelligence specialist and did three tours of duty in Vietnam. For predicting the

Tet Offensive The Tet Offensive was a major escalation and one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War. It was launched on January 30, 1968 by forces of the Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) against the force ...

and her other achievements, she was inducted into the

Military Intelligence Hall of Fame The Military Intelligence Hall of Fame is a hall of fame established by the Military Intelligence Corps of the United States Army in 1988 to honor soldiers and civilians who have made exceptional contributions to military intelligence. The hall i ...

in 2009.

Early life and education

She was the youngest of five children of Richard and Stella Allen who worked as a barber and cook, respectively. She studied physical education at the

Tuskegee Institute Tuskegee University (Tuskegee or TU), formerly known as the Tuskegee Institute, is a private, historically black land-grant university in Tuskegee, Alabama. It was founded on Independence Day in 1881 by the state legislature. The campus was d ...

and, after graduating, taught at a high school in

Greenwood, Mississippi Greenwood is a city in and the county seat of Leflore County, Mississippi, Leflore County, Mississippi, United States, located at the eastern edge of the Mississippi Delta region, approximately 96 miles north of the state capital, Jackson, Missis ...

for a year before enlisting.

Woman's Army Corps

She auditioned for the WAC band, playing the trumpet but was not accepted. She served in a variety of specialities including entertainment, information and journalism. Her nickname of "Lucki" came from association with her older sister who was known as "Jinx" for having bad luck, especially with her car.. Her sister, Jewel, was also a WAC and commanded her when she was a broadcast specialist at

Camp Stoneman Camp Stoneman was a United States Army facility located in Pittsburg, California. It served as a major troop staging area for and under the command of the San Francisco Port of Embarkation (SFPOE). The camp operated during World War II and the Kor ...

Vietnam War

Allen then learnt French,

interrogation Interrogation (also called questioning) is interviewing as commonly employed by law enforcement officers, military personnel, intelligence agencies, organized crime syndicates, and terrorist organizations with the goal of eliciting useful i ...

and other

intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. It can be described as the a ...

skills and did three tours of duty in the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...

, starting in 1967. She gathered intelligence and wrote a report which correctly predicted the

ahead of its start in 1968 but this warning was ignored. Her later warnings included an ambush, chemical weapons and rockets and these were more effective. On her third tour, she led a team of forty Vietnamese translators in Saigon that analysed enemy documents. Her name started to appear in the documents as a target for the

Viet Cong , , war = the Vietnam War , image = FNL Flag.svg , caption = The flag of the Viet Cong, adopted in 1960, is a variation on the flag of North Vietnam. Sometimes the lower stripe was green. , active ...

and she then decided that it was time to return home.

Post war and retirement

She was awarded three

Bronze Star The Bronze Star Medal (BSM) is a United States Armed Forces decoration awarded to members of the United States Armed Forces for either heroic achievement, heroic service, meritorious achievement, or meritorious service in a combat zone. Wh ...

s for her service in Vietnam. Back in the US, she became the first full-time female instructor of prisoner interrogation at the Army Intelligence Center and then became a

counterintelligence Counterintelligence is an activity aimed at protecting an agency's intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering information and conducting activities to prevent espionage, sabotage, assassinations or o ...

specialist. She retired from the military in 1980 and was inducted into the

in 2009. She was the second black woman to get this recognition, following

Mary Bowser Mary Richards, also known as Mary Jane Richards Garvin and possibly Mary Bowser (born 1846), was a Union spy during the Civil War. She was possibly born enslaved from birth in Virginia, but there is no documentation of where she was born or who he ...

. After military service, she studied psychology, gaining a doctorate in

clinical psychology Clinical psychology is an integration of social science, theory, and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically based distress or Mental disorder, dysfunction and to promote subjective mental ...

at the

Wright Institute The Wright Institute is a private graduate school focused on psychology and located in Berkeley, California. History The institute was founded by Nevitt Sanford in 1968 when he left Stanford. Dr. Sanford first gained prominence as a co-author ...

in 1986. In 2014, she wrote her memoirs, ''Three Days Past Yesterday: A Black Woman’s Journey Through Incredibility''. She died in an

Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

hospital on 11 June 2024 at the age of 97.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Allen, Doris Lucki 1927 births 2024 deaths African-American female military personnel African Americans in the Vietnam War American military personnel of the Vietnam War Military personnel from El Paso, Texas Women in the Vietnam War Women's Army Corps soldiers Wright Institute alumni