American Valor Quarterly Issue 13 - Fall 2015 | Page 36

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