Alan W. Lukens morning to see how many people were at each barracks. They were very rigid because the count determined what little food was distributed to prisoners. Because of this, after people died during the night, they would hold the bodies up during the morning count just to get more rations. There were many other stories, but that one just paints a harrowing picture of what went on at this camp.
Even before the war and the moving experiences I had there, I was always interested in what was going on in the world. My parents were Anglophiles and my father had served himself in both wars. I won a TIME current events prize twice at my school and kept a diary the entire time I was in the war. For all these reasons, transitioning into a diplomatic career made a lot of sense for me.
After teaching for two years I entered the Foreign Service in 1951 and traveled to Turkey as my first post. That first year I was assistant cultural officer in Ankara. It was truly a wonderful time in U. S.-Turkish relations. They fought with us in Korea and it seemed to be the nicest period to be in Turkey. The people were generally pro-American and we made lots of friends. When the Cold War began to heat up, we began to send some arms there, and everything we did with the Truman Doctrine was to support Turkey and Greece against a possible invasion by Russia. This was my first taste of the Cold War.
I had hoped to stay in Turkey. I had learned a lot of Turkish, but that came to an end when I was suddenly invited to be consul in Martinique. At the start of the Cold War, Washington panicked because the Mayor of Fort-de-France was believed to be a Communist. In truth, he wasn’ t any more Communist than I was. I remember visiting him all the time, giving him books about Lincoln and other American figures.
After that, I was in the press division of the State Department. I did some speaking there and during that time I was sent up to the UN for three months to help out one of the political ambassadors. Then, after a couple of years there, they asked for somebody who spoke French to go to NATO to serve on the international staff which was then based in Paris. That post was very interesting and I was able to take
A LUCKY MAN. THOUGH NOT IN CASABLANCA AND MINUS BOGEY, A YOUNG ALAN LUKENS MEETS INGRID BERGMAN.
some courses at the Sorbonne which I really enjoyed. I’ d originally shown an interest in going to Africa and one day I got a call that the consul in Brazzaville had died suddenly of a heart attack and I was sent down there to take his place. When I arrived, in1960, that year became known as the year of independence in Africa. Nigeria got its independence that summer and earlier than that, the Belgians gave independence to their Congo colony. The Belgians did so rather hastily so a government was formed at the last minute. The date of their independence was June 30th, 1960, and I was stationed across the river as consul for four countries in Central Africa. I sat up there on June 30th as the independence vote came through while I was there. Then, eight days later I got a call at five in the morning. I was told to hurry down to the beach across from Brazzaville because there had been a mutiny of the black soldiers and the Europeans and Americans were all fleeing across the river. That started a very extraordinary period in my life tenure there because pretty soon the Air Force flew down two enormous planes with helicopters inside. But there was no communication except by the walkie-talkie across my porch to the embassy. All the lines had been cut off. Later, I was able to say I ran an air force for a couple of days while I directed these missions into the interior of the Congo to save some missionaries. We had to pull them all out of the larger Congo, so we put them up in our floor. We had saved food for a couple of years, but we went through that in a hurry while we had dozens of people sleeping inside the consulate. We sent planeload after planeload of refugees, not so many Americans, but hundreds of Europeans. Eventually, they all got out of there.
In all my years of service, military and diplomatic, one of the real highlights was a wonderful statement letter I received from President Reagan which basically conveyed a message that my service was greatly appreciated saying you have given forty years of your life to work for your country and we appreciate it. That’ s not an honor everyone gets to receive and I consider it a privilege to have served my country faithfully during all these years.
AVQ
36 AMERICAN VALOR QUARTERLY