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U.S. soldiers disembark from a helicopter at the Battle of Ia Drang in Vietnam in November 1965. The involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War began in the 1950s and greatly escalated in 1965 until its withdrawal in 1973.
The Vietnam War (1954–75) was a conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam, the Viet Cong, against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. It was part of a larger regional conflict as well as a manifestation of the Cold War.
The American Soldier in Vietnam. M ore than 2.5 million American men served in Vietnam during the war. Some of these men were career military officers. But many others were poor or working-class teenagers who enlisted or were drafted into the military right out of high school.
For nearly a decade, American combat soldiers fought in South Vietnam to help sustain an independent, noncommunist nation in Southeast Asia. After U.S. troops departed in 1973, the collapse of South Vietnam in 1975 prompted a lasting search to explain the United States’ first lost war.
The Vietnam War was a long, costly and divisive conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States.
The following Vietnam War timeline is a guide to the complex political and military issues involved in a war that would ultimately claim millions of lives.
Eisenhower placed military advisers and CIA operatives in Vietnam, and John F. Kennedy sent American soldiers to Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson ordered the first real combat by American troops, and Richard Nixon concluded the war.
The Vietnam conflict was a 360-degree war where soldiers – particularly Americans and Westerners – might encounter attacks, ambushes and booby traps at any place or time. It was a conflict where territory changed hands frequently, people moved freely and their political loyalties were often unclear.
The war exacted enormous human cost: estimates of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed range from 970,000 to 3 million. Some 275,000–310,000 Cambodians, 20,000–62,000 Laotians, and 58,220 US service members died.
See how the Viet Cong's successful guerrilla warfare pushed Lyndon Johnson toward the path of total war By the summer of 1964, the successes of the Viet Cong on the battlefield led the U.S. government to conclude that only massive military intervention could save South Vietnam.