Doris Allen was an Army intelligence analyst during the Vietnam War whose warnings about an impending attack by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces in early 1968 (later known as the Tet Offensive) were ignored by higher-ups. Died June 11 in Oakland, California.
Her death at the hospital was confirmed by Amy Stocker, director of public affairs for the Army Intelligence Center of Excellence.
Specialist Ellen joined the Women’s Army Corps in 1950 and volunteered to serve in Vietnam in 1967, hoping to use her intelligence training to save lives. She was the first woman to attend the Army’s Prisoner of War Interrogation Course and served for two years as a strategic intelligence analyst for Latin American affairs at Fort Bragg (now Fort Liberty), North Carolina.
Working at the Army Combat Center in Long Binh, South Vietnam, Specialist Allen developed intelligence in late 1967 that enemy forces had massed at least 50,000 troops, possibly reinforced by Chinese soldiers, preparing to attack South Vietnamese targets. She also specified when the operation began: January 31, 1968.
In A Piece of My Heart: The Stories of 26 American Women Who Served in Vietnam (1986) by Keith Walker In an interview in the book, expert Allen recalls writing a report warning that “we better get our stuff in order, because this is what we’re facing, this is going to happen, and it’s going to happen in so and so.” Occurs on a certain day or at a certain time.
She said she told an intelligence official: “We need to spread this. It has to be said.”
but it is not the truth. She urged those higher up the chain of command to take her report seriously, but no one did. On January 30, 1968—consistent with her prediction—the scale and scope of the enemy attack surprised U.S. and South Vietnamese military leaders.
American and South Vietnamese forces suffered heavy losses early on and later repelled the attack. This was a turning point in the war, further weakening American public support for the war.
The Army’s refusal to take Allen’s expert analysis seriously suggests she was biased because she was a black woman who was not an officer. She was one of about 700 Women in the Corps (WAC) who served in intelligence roles during the Vietnam War, only 10 percent of whom were black.
In 1991, she told Newsday, “I have no credibility whatsoever: a woman — a black woman.”
In 2012, she told Army Publications: “I just recently thought about the reason they didn’t believe me — they weren’t ready for me. They didn’t know how to get past WAC (Black Women in Military Intelligence). I can’t blame them. I don’t feel bitter.
Lori S. Stewart, a civilian military intelligence historian at the Army Intelligence Center of Excellence, said in an email that Allen’s expert analysis was not the only one that was overlooked.
“National and theater-level organizations believe that the enemy may launch an offensive around the Spring Festival, but too many conflicting reports and preconceptions have led leaders to misread the enemy’s intentions,” she wrote.
Of Specialist Allen, Mrs. Stewart added, “Like many other intelligence officers in this country, she was a diligent and astute intelligence analyst doing what she was supposed to do: assess the intentions and capabilities of her enemies.”
Expert Allen was inducted into the Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame in 2009.
Doris Ilda Allen was born in El Paso on May 9, 1927, to Richard Allen and Stella Davis ) Allen). Her mother is a cook and her father is a hairdresser.
Ms. Allen graduated from Tuskegee Institute (now the University) in 1949 with a bachelor’s degree in physical education. She taught at a high school in Greenwood, Mississippi, and joined the Women’s Corps the following year.
After basic training, she auditioned for the WAC band to play trumpet. But she and two other black women were later told by a chief warrant officer that “they couldn’t have any black people in their band,” she recalled in “Part of My Heart.”
Over the next dozen years, she held multiple roles: as an entertainment specialist, organizing performances for soldiers; editor of a military newspaper for the Army’s occupying forces in Japan during the Korean War; and broadcast specialist at Camp Stoneman, California, where she was the commanding officer. is her sister Jewell; a public information officer in Japan; an information specialist in Fort Monmouth, N.J.
In the early 1960s, Specialist Allen studied French at the Defense Language Institute and completed training in the Prisoner of War Interrogation Course at Fort Hollabird, Maryland.
After requesting a tour to South Vietnam, she arrived in South Vietnam in October 1967, her first of three tours of duty there.
“I had so many skills, so much education and training that had been wasted in various positions across the country, that I decided I wanted to make a difference in a high-action position like Vietnam,” she told Lavender Notes, a book about Publications for Older LGBTQ+ Adults), 2020.
She left no immediate survivors.
Expert Ellen’s Lunar New Year analysis wasn’t her only ignored warning. She advised the colonel not to send a convoy to Sombe in central South Vietnam because of the possibility of an ambush. Five flatbed trucks were destroyed; 3 people were killed and 19 injured.
But when she warned in early 1969 that the North Vietnamese had deployed dozens of 122-millimeter rockets around Long Binh Operations Center northeast of Saigon and would use them in a large-scale attack, people listened to her. She wrote a memo that led to an airstrike that destroyed the rocket.
Later that year, Allen’s experts learned of North Vietnam’s plans to use 83 mm chemical bombs. She wrote a report that saved as many as 100 Marines, instructing them in memos to avoid any contact with mortars when they fell in their area; they later exploded. A grateful colonel sent a memo stating that whoever wrote the report should receive the Medal of Merit.
Specialist Allen did not receive this medal, but received the Bronze Star Medal with Two Oak Trees among many awards. She left South Vietnam in 1970 after seeing a stolen enemy document and her name on a list of targets to be killed.
After 10 years in the Army She retired as a Chief Warrant Officer.
By then, she had earned a master’s degree in counseling from Ball State University in Indiana in 1977. of. She received her Ph.D. In 1986, he received his PhD in clinical psychology from the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California, where he mentored younger psychologists.
“She understands people very well and has an innate ability to judge people quickly,” Haskett said in an interview. “She’s the kind of person who can walk into a pit of vipers and have everyone eat out of her hands in 15 minutes.”
Christina Brown Fisher Contributed reporting.
