It was the beginning of 1968. A year of misfortune for the United States engaged in the Vietnam War. The Vietcong were preparing the attack that would go down in history as the Roof Offensive and would have dealt an irreparable psychological blow to America’s strength. The plan was based on surprise. But a US Army woman had discovered it and gave the alarm: it was not believedThe “Cassandra” of Tet was called Doris Allen and she died a few days ago, at the age of 97.
In those early days of 1968 il generale William Childs Westmorelandcommander in chief of US forces in Vietnam, was convinced that victory was within reach: “The enemy’s hopes are at an end,” he said in November 1967, basing his certainty on the «body count»the body count of Hanoi soldiers killed in “search and destroy” missions, the hunt and destruction of their bases in the jungle. Westmoreland and his staff were therefore preparing for a period of calm for the Tet holidays, the lunar new year that year would fall on the night between January 30 and 31.
But one military intelligence specialist, Doris Allen, was anything but calm. In her Long Binh office in South Vietnam, she had analyzed hundreds of radio intercepts and information obtained from prisoners that suggested an imminent attack. Doris Allen, who was then 41 years old, had the qualification of “specialist”a rank equivalent to that of a simple corporal. Her specialization, however, was important: an expert in interrogating prisoners, she was the first woman to have followed the “US Army’s prisoner of war interrogation course”.
The material he had collected and studied indicated that The North Vietnamese had concentrated at least 50,000 Viet Cong soldiers and guerrillas for a sudden attack behind the lines, in the heart of South Vietnam.
“We must prepare and get the word out to all our bases and commands,” Specialist Allen wrote in a January report. Her Tet prediction was not believed. It was disaster: on the night of January 30 the Viet Cong emerged in all the major cities of the Southeven managing to catch the American embassy in Seoul unprepared. It took a month to stifle the offensive, while the news in the United States showed bloody scenes that shocked public opinion, giving the perception that the war would not be won.
Why didn’t anyone listen to the information gathered by the analyst? «Because I was a woman, and a woman with black skin»Doris Allen explained in a 1991 interview now recalled by New York Times. «Unfortunately at that time our commands were not prepared to listen to an African American woman talk about intelligence. It’s a fact, I can’t blame them and I don’t feel bitter.”
Doris Allen continued her intelligence work after Tet. In 1969 she warned that the Viet Cong had amassed 122mm ammunition around the Long Binh base. That time it was taken seriously, the attack was thwarted and a colonel wrote: “I don’t know who saved us, but he should get a medal.” The decoration never arrived. Specialist Allen left Vietnam in 1970, after a list of Americans to be eliminated was found in the pockets of a prisoner: her name was on it. In 2009, the US Army remembered her: General John Custer, commander of the Intelligence Center of Excellence, called her to Washington to give her a parchment that enrolled her in the Hall of Fame of military intelligence services.
