In the 1960s, when women in the United States sought the ever-
elusive proverbial voice, there was one woman in a jungle crying
out to be heard. Ironically, when the fiercely independent Doris
“Lucki” Allen volunteered for service in Vietnam at the age of
40, her life and work began to personify the second wave of the
feminist movement. She was a rare breed of female for her time,
self-actualized with a bachelor’s degree from the Tuskegee
Institute [now Tuskegee University]; Allen was an African-
American aspiring to reach her full human capacities. In many
ways she embodied the empowered woman that Betty Friedan would
herald with the 1963 publication of “The Feminine Mystique.” But
despite her accomplishments and years of specialized military
training, when she arrived in Long Binh as an enlisted, Spc.7
intelligence analyst in the Women’s Army Corps, or WAC, Allen
found herself faced with the same struggle Susie Housewife
endured on the home front — the struggle for women’s equality
and the search for a voice.