Vietnam 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 conflict was intensified by the ongoing Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. More than 3 million people (including over 58,000 Americans) were killed in the Vietnam War, and more than half of the dead were Vietnamese civilians.
Opposition to the war in the United States bitterly divided Americans, even after President Richard Nixon signed the Paris Peace Accords and ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1973. Communist forces ended the war by seizing control of South Vietnam in 1975, and the country was unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam the following year.
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Roots of the Vietnam War
Vietnam, a nation in Southeast Asia on the eastern edge of the Indochinese peninsula, had been under French colonial rule since the 19th century.
During World War II, Japanese forces invaded Vietnam. To fight off both Japanese occupiers and the French colonial administration, political leader Ho Chi Minh—inspired by Chinese and Soviet communism—formed the Viet Minh, or the League for the Independence of Vietnam.
Following its 1945 defeat in World War II, Japan withdrew its forces from Vietnam, leaving the French-educated Emperor Bao Dai in control. Seeing an opportunity to seize control, Ho’s Viet Minh forces immediately rose up, taking over the northern city of Hanoi and declaring a Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) with Ho as president.
Seeking to regain control of the region, France backed Emperor Bao and set up the state of Vietnam in July 1949, with the city of Saigon as its capital.
Both sides wanted the same thing: a unified Vietnam. But while Ho and his supporters wanted a nation modeled after other communist countries, Bao and many others wanted a Vietnam with close economic and cultural ties to the West.
When Did the Vietnam War Start?
The Vietnam War and active U.S. involvement in the war began in 1954, though ongoing conflict in the region had stretched back several decades.
After Ho’s communist forces took power in the north, armed conflict between northern and southern armies continued until the northern Viet Minh’s decisive victory in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in May 1954. The French loss at the battle ended almost a century of French colonial rule in Indochina.
The subsequent treaty signed in July 1954 at a Geneva conference split Vietnam along the latitude known as the 17th Parallel (17 degrees north latitude), with Ho in control in the North and Bao in the South. The treaty also called for nationwide elections for reunification to be held in 1956.
In 1955, however, the strongly anti-communist politician Ngo Dinh Diem pushed Emperor Bao aside to become president of the Government of the Republic of Vietnam (GVN), often referred to during that era as South Vietnam.
READ MORE: Vietnam War Timeline
1968 was the deadliest year for American soldiers in Vietnam, and this image, captured by freelance photographer Art Greenspon, summed up the tremendous cost being paid by young men fighting in what increasingly felt like a futile war.
AP Photo/Art Greenspon
On June 11, 1963, a Buddhist monk named Thich Quang Duc sat calmly in a busy intersection near Siagon’s Presidential Palace as a fellow monk doused him with gasoline. After saying a short prayer, Thich Quang Duc lit a match and dropped it into his lap, instantly engulfing his body in flames. Images of the monk’s stoic self-immolation, taken by AP journalist Malcolm Browne, sent shockwaves around the world.
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In February 1968, newspapers including the New York Times published this photo on their front pages: A South Vietnamese police chief calmly executes a Vietcong fighter in the streets of Saigon. The image, which won a Pulitzer Prize for photographer Eddie Adams, caused many Americans to openly question the morality of the war.
AP Photo/Eddie Adams
The president and First Lady Ladybird Johnson are watching coverage of the anti-war protests outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago in this incredibly intimate moment captured by White House photographer Yoichi Okamoto.
LBJ Library photo by Yoichi Okamoto
On May 4, 1970, National Guard troops ordered protesters at Kent State to disperse, but the crowd of roughly 3,000 refused, with some throwing rocks at the Guardsmen. No one expected what happened next. The National Guard troops opened fire. Four Kent State students were killed that day and nine more were injured. Student photographer John Filo won a Pulitzer Prize for his gripping photo of 14-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio crying out next to the fallen body of Jeffrey Miller.
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Vietnamese-American photographer Nick Ut won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1972 image of innocent children fleeing an accidental napalm attack on their village. Front and center is nine-year-old Kim Phuc, naked and badly burned by the American chemical weapon.
AP Photo/Nick Ut
On April 29, 1975, the fall of Saigon was imminent. Panic engulfed the streets of the South Vietnamese capital as North Vietnamese troops encircled the city. American diplomats and journalists were ordered to evacuate Saigon immediately, and scores of South Vietnamese citizens crowded outside the U.S. Embassy in hopes of boarding one of the Marine helicopters carrying people to safety.
This iconic image, taken by Dutch journalist Hubert van Es, perfectly captured the desperate and ignominious withdrawal from Saigon.
Read more about iconic images of the Vietnam War era here.
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The Viet Cong
With the Cold War intensifying worldwide, the United States hardened its policies against any allies of the Soviet Union, and by 1955 President Dwight D. Eisenhower had pledged his firm support to Diem and South Vietnam.
With training and equipment from American military and the CIA, Diem’s security forces cracked down on Viet Minh sympathizers in the south, whom he derisively called Viet Cong (or Vietnamese Communist), arresting some 100,000 people, many of whom were brutally tortured and executed.
By 1957, the Viet Cong and other opponents of Diem’s repressive regime began fighting back with attacks on government officials and other targets, and by 1959 they had begun engaging the South Vietnamese army in firefights.
In December 1960, Diem’s many opponents within South Vietnam—both communist and non-communist—formed the National Liberation Front (NLF) to organize resistance to the regime. Though the NLF claimed to be autonomous and that most of its members were not communists, many in Washington assumed it was a puppet of Hanoi.
Domino Theory
A team sent by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to report on conditions in South Vietnam advised a build-up of American military, economic and technical aid in order to help Diem confront the Viet Cong threat.
Working under the “domino theory,” which held that if one Southeast Asian country fell to communism, many other countries would follow, Kennedy increased U.S. aid, though he stopped short of committing to a large-scale military intervention.
By 1962, the U.S. military presence in South Vietnam had reached some 9,000 troops, compared with fewer than 800 during the 1950s.
Gulf of Tonkin
A coup by some of his own generals succeeded in toppling and killing Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, in November 1963, three weeks before Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.
The ensuing political instability in South Vietnam persuaded Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to further increase U.S. military and economic support.
In August of 1964, after DRV torpedo boats attacked two U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, Johnson ordered the retaliatory bombing of military targets in North Vietnam. Congress soon passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave Johnson broad war-making powers, and U.S. planes began regular bombing raids, codenamed Operation Rolling Thunder, the following year.
The bombing was not limited to Vietnam; from 1964-1973, the United States covertly dropped two million tons of bombs on neighboring, neutral Laos during the CIA-led “Secret War” in Laos. The bombing campaign was meant to disrupt the flow of supplies across the Ho Chi Minh trail into Vietnam and to prevent the rise of the Pathet Lao, or Lao communist forces. The U.S. bombings made Laos the most heavily bombed country per capita in the world.
In March 1965, Johnson made the decision—with solid support from the American public—to send U.S. combat forces into battle in Vietnam. By June, 82,000 combat troops were stationed in Vietnam, and military leaders were calling for 175,000 more by the end of 1965 to shore up the struggling South Vietnamese army.
Despite the concerns of some of his advisers about this escalation, and about the entire war effort amid a growing anti-war movement, Johnson authorized the immediate dispatch of 100,000 troops at the end of July 1965 and another 100,000 in 1966. In addition to the United States, South Korea, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand also committed troops to fight in South Vietnam (albeit on a much smaller scale).
William Westmoreland
In contrast to the air attacks on North Vietnam, the U.S.-South Vietnamese war effort in the south was fought primarily on the ground, largely under the command of General William Westmoreland, in coordination with the government of General Nguyen Van Thieu in Saigon.
Westmoreland pursued a policy of attrition, aiming to kill as many enemy troops as possible rather than trying to secure territory. By 1966, large areas of South Vietnam had been designated as “free-fire zones,” from which all innocent civilians were supposed to have evacuated and only enemy remained. Heavy bombing by B-52 aircraft or shelling made these zones uninhabitable, as refugees poured into camps in designated safe areas near Saigon and other cities.
Even as the enemy body count (at times exaggerated by U.S. and South Vietnamese authorities) mounted steadily, DRV and Viet Cong troops refused to stop fighting, encouraged by the fact that they could easily reoccupy lost territory with manpower and supplies delivered via the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Cambodia and Laos. Additionally, supported by aid from China and the Soviet Union, North Vietnam strengthened its air defenses.
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Vietnam War Protests
By November 1967, the number of American troops in Vietnam was approaching 500,000, and U.S. casualties had reached 15,058 killed and 109,527 wounded. As the war stretched on, some soldiers came to mistrust the government’s reasons for keeping them there, as well as Washington’s repeated claims that the war was being won.
The later years of the war saw increased physical and psychological deterioration among American soldiers—both volunteers and draftees—including drug use, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), mutinies and attacks by soldiers against officers and noncommissioned officers.
READ MORE: Why Were Vietnam War Vets Treated Poorly When They Returned Home
Between July 1966 and December 1973, more than 503,000 U.S. military personnel deserted, and a robust anti-war movement among American forces spawned violent protests, killings and mass incarcerations of personnel stationed in Vietnam as well as within the United States.
Bombarded by horrific images of the war on their televisions, Americans on the home front turned against the war as well: In October 1967, some 35,000 demonstrators staged a massive Vietnam War protest outside the Pentagon. Opponents of the war argued that civilians, not enemy combatants, were the primary victims and that the United States was supporting a corrupt dictatorship in Saigon.
Tet Offensive
By the end of 1967, Hanoi’s communist leadership was growing impatient as well, and sought to strike a decisive blow aimed at forcing the better-supplied United States to give up hopes of success.
On January 31, 1968, some 70,000 DRV forces under General Vo Nguyen Giap launched the Tet Offensive (named for the lunar new year), a coordinated series of fierce attacks on more than 100 cities and towns in South Vietnam.
Taken by surprise, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces nonetheless managed to strike back quickly, and the communists were unable to hold any of the targets for more than a day or two.
Reports of the Tet Offensive stunned the U.S. public, however, especially after news broke that Westmoreland had requested an additional 200,000 troops, despite repeated assurances that victory in the Vietnam War was imminent. With his approval ratings dropping in an election year, Johnson called a halt to bombing in much of North Vietnam (though bombings continued in the south) and promised to dedicate the rest of his term to seeking peace rather than reelection.
Johnson’s new tack, laid out in a March 1968 speech, met with a positive response from Hanoi, and peace talks between the U.S. and North Vietnam opened in Paris that May. Despite the later inclusion of the South Vietnamese and the NLF, the dialogue soon reached an impasse, and after a bitter 1968 election season marred by violence, Republican Richard M. Nixon won the presidency.
Vietnamization
Nixon sought to deflate the anti-war movement by appealing to a “silent majority” of Americans who he believed supported the war effort. In an attempt to limit the volume of American casualties, he announced a program called Vietnamization: withdrawing U.S. troops, increasing aerial and artillery bombardment and giving the South Vietnamese the training and weapons needed to effectively control the ground war.
In addition to this Vietnamization policy, Nixon continued public peace talks in Paris, adding higher-level secret talks conducted by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger beginning in the spring of 1968.
READ MORE: Henry Kissinger's Controversial Role in the Vietnam War
The North Vietnamese continued to insist on complete and unconditional U.S. withdrawal—plus the ouster of U.S.-backed General Nguyen Van Thieu—as conditions of peace, however, and as a result the peace talks stalled.
READ MORE: How the Vietnam War Ratcheted Up Under 5 US Presidents
My Lai Massacre
The next few years would bring even more carnage, including the horrifying revelation that U.S. soldiers had mercilessly slaughtered more than 400 unarmed civilians in the village of My Lai in March 1968.
After the My Lai Massacre, anti-war protests continued to build as the conflict wore on. In 1968 and 1969, there were hundreds of protest marches and gatherings throughout the country.
On November 15, 1969, the largest anti-war demonstration in American history took place in Washington, D.C., as over 250,000 Americans gathered peacefully, calling for withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam.
The anti-war movement, which was particularly strong on college campuses, divided Americans bitterly. For some young people, the war symbolized a form of unchecked authority they had come to resent. For other Americans, opposing the government was considered unpatriotic and treasonous.
As the first U.S. troops were withdrawn, those who remained became increasingly angry and frustrated, exacerbating problems with morale and leadership. Tens of thousands of soldiers received dishonorable discharges for desertion, and about 500,000 American men from 1965-73 became “draft dodgers,” with many fleeing to Canada to evade conscription. Nixon ended draft calls in 1972, and instituted an all-volunteer army the following year.
Kent State Shooting
In 1970, a joint U.S-South Vietnamese operation invaded Cambodia, hoping to wipe out DRV supply bases there. The South Vietnamese then led their own invasion of Laos, which was pushed back by North Vietnam.
The invasion of these countries, in violation of international law, sparked a new wave of protests on college campuses across America. During one, on May 4, 1970, at Kent State University in Ohio, National Guardsmen shot and killed four students. At another protest 10 days later, two students at Jackson State University in Mississippi were killed by police.
By the end of June 1972, however, after a failed offensive into South Vietnam, Hanoi was finally willing to compromise. Kissinger and North Vietnamese representatives drafted a peace agreement by early fall, but leaders in Saigon rejected it, and in December Nixon authorized a number of bombing raids against targets in Hanoi and Haiphong. Known as the Christmas Bombings, the raids drew international condemnation.
READ MORE: Kent State Shootings: A Timeline of the Tragedy
The Pentagon Papers
Some of the papers from the archive of Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971
Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
A top-secret Department of Defense study of U.S. political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967 was published in the New York Times in 1971—shedding light on how the Nixon administration ramped up conflict in Vietnam. The report, leaked to the Times by military analyst Daniel Ellsberg, further eroded support for keeping U.S. forces in Vietnam.
When Did the Vietnam War End?
In January 1973, the United States and North Vietnam concluded a final peace agreement, ending open hostilities between the two nations. War between North and South Vietnam continued, however, until April 30, 1975, when DRV forces captured Saigon, renaming it Ho Chi Minh City (Ho himself died in 1969).
More than two decades of violent conflict had inflicted a devastating toll on Vietnam’s population: After years of warfare, an estimated 2 million Vietnamese were killed, while 3 million were wounded and another 12 million became refugees. Warfare had demolished the country’s infrastructure and economy, and reconstruction proceeded slowly.
In 1976, Vietnam was unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, though sporadic violence continued over the next 15 years, including conflicts with neighboring China and Cambodia. Under a broad free market policy put in place in 1986, the economy began to improve, boosted by oil export revenues and an influx of foreign capital. Trade and diplomatic relations between Vietnam and the U.S. resumed in the 1990s.
In the United States, the effects of the Vietnam War would linger long after the last troops returned home in 1973. The nation spent more than $120 billion on the conflict in Vietnam from 1965-73; this massive spending led to widespread inflation, exacerbated by a worldwide oil crisis in 1973 and skyrocketing fuel prices.
Psychologically, the effects ran even deeper. The war had pierced the myth of American invincibility and had bitterly divided the nation. Many returning veterans faced negative reactions from both opponents of the war (who viewed them as having killed innocent civilians) and its supporters (who saw them as having lost the war), along with physical damage including the effects of exposure to the toxic herbicide Agent Orange, millions of gallons of which had been dumped by U.S. planes on the dense forests of Vietnam.
In 1982, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was unveiled in Washington, D.C. On it were inscribed the names of 57,939 American men and women killed or missing in the war; later additions brought that total to 58,200.
PHOTO GALLERIES
An aerial view shows the new U.S. Embassy in South Vietnam. The building featured a 10-foot thick security wall and a helicopter landing port.
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A South Vietnamese tank goes up in flames as Communist troops invade Saigon on April 29, 1975. Forces quickly captured key areas around the city, forcing President Duong Van Minh to surrender the next day.
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A CIA agent assists South Vietnamese evacuees onto an American helicopter during the fall of Saigon in April 1975.
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A soldier aims his gun in defense, as citizens climb the gates of the U.S. Embassy.
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Traffic snarls the streets of South Vietnam as citizens try to make their way to Saigon.
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South Vietnamese soldiers abandon their uniforms in an effort to protect themselves after the successful Communist invasion.
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Captured South Vietnamese soldiers sit on the lawn outside the presidential palace in Saigon.
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North Vietnamese troops wash themselves in the palace’s fountain after their victory.
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Celebrations mark the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, an event that ended the Vietnam War.
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A Vietnamese man prays in front of a portrait of Ho Chi Minh after the fall of Saigon. A Vietnamese communist leader and the president of North Vietnam for 25 years, Ho Chi Minh became a symbol of Vietnam’s struggle for unification.
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A group of female students at U.C. Berkeley demonstrate their opposition to the war. The majority of the anti-war movement began on college campuses with organizations such as SDS, Students for a Democratic Society.
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Anti-war protests rocked the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, Illinois, as more than 10,000 demonstrators took to the city’s streets. Opposition to the policies of President Lyndon Johnson’s administration even spilled over to the convention hall itself, where Vice President Hubert Humphrey accepted his party’s nomination.
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Eight anti-war activists were charged for conspiracy to incite violence during the 1968 Democratic Convention. Seven of the accused were originally found guilty, but the convictions were overturned on appeal.
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Mark Rudd, leader of Columbia University’s Students for a Democratic Society, organized the 1968 student protest that led to the occupation of the five administration buildings and the temporary shutdown of the university.
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On November 15, 1969, more than 500,000 protestors flooded into Washington, D.C., for the Moratorium March—one of the largest anti-war demonstrations in U.S. history.
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In Washington, D.C., veterans protest the fighting in Indochina by discarding their medals and uniforms over the fence at the U.S. Capitol.
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On April 30, 1970, Nixon announced an expansion of the war effort and the need to draft 150,000 more soldiers. This resulted in massive protests on college campuses around the country, including at Kent State University in Ohio.
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At Kent State University in Ohio, the National Guard opened fire on the students, killing four and wounding eight.
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William Schraeder, Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller and Sandra Lee Scheuer were the four students who were killed during the Kent State protests on May 4, 1970.
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The Civil Disturbance Unit of the Washington Metropolitan police department responds to anti-war demonstrators at George Washington University in 1971.
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A peace sign printed on the American Flag is raised during an anti-war protest in Washington, D.C. Due, in part, to the strong anti-war sentiments, Nixon announced the end of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia in January 1973.
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On January 31, 1968, approximately 70,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces began a series of attacks on the U.S. and South Vietnamese.
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The attacks began on the Lunar New Year holiday, Tet, and became known as the Tet Offensive.
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On the first day of the attacks, a Buddhist monk flees the damage and destruction behind him.
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U.S. forces are posted at the outer wall of a citadel in the ancient city of Hue, the scene of the fiercest fighting of the Tet Offensive.
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Approximately 150 U.S. Marines were killed along with 400 South Vietnamese troops at the Battle of Hue.
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A wounded soldier is dragged to safety near the citadel’s outer wall during the fighting at Hue.
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An estimated 5,000 Communist soldiers were killed by American air and artillery strikes during the Battle of Hue.
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Military policemen capture a Viet Cong guerrilla after the surprise attack on the U.S. embassy and South Vietnamese government buildings in Saigon.
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President Johnson meets with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and other advisors following the Tet Offensive, which marked a crucial turning point in America’s involvement in the war.
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A market in the Cholon District of Saigon is covered in smoke and debris after the Tet Offensive, which included simultaneous attacks on more than 100 South Vietnamese cities and towns.
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In October 1969, relatives gather at a mass funeral for recently-discovered victims of the Tet Offensive.
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South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu speaks at the funeral for those killed.
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President Kennedy stands at a podium next to a large map of Vietnam showing the areas held by communist rebels.
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President Lyndon B. Johnson meets soldiers during a surprise visit to an American base in Cam Rahn Bay in South Vietnam in October of 1966.
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Defense Secretary McNamara rides with soldiers en route to the Le My City Hall during McNamara's visit to the Marine units in the area.
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General William C. Westmoreland arrives at Camp Evans helicopter pad where he spoke with a group of newsmen.
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President Richard Nixon speaks in Saigon with Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, Cao KY and Ellsworth Bunker.
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President Lyndon B. Johnson reacts to word of new problems in Vietnam while hosting Defense Secretary Robert McNamara at the LBJ Ranch in 1964.
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Vice President Hubert Humphrey tells a National Press Club luncheon that there "are no sanctuaries" in North Vietnam safe from American attack.
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Henry Kissinger met with Pham Van Dong, the North Vietnam prime minister while in Hanoi.
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Members of the Senate Foreign Relations committee listen to General Maxwell Taylor's 1966 testimony on the United States' policy in Vietnam.
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General Creighton Abrams stands with U.S. Deputy Ambassador Samuel D. Berger during the ceremony to turn over 80 U.S. Navy river patrol boats to the South Vietnamese Navy.
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Gerald Ford and Melvin Laird stand in front of a map of Communist controlled areas in South Vietnam in 1970.
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McGeorge Bundy, Assistant to the President for National Security, declares " a single thread" connected the Vietnam policies of Johnson and the late Kennedy.
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Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, speaking at the Pentagon, emphasizes the need for an agreement that won't put America troops in danger.
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Secretary of State Dean Rusk, in 1968, giving a press conference on progress made during the Paris talks on Vietnam.
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George Ball announces his resignation as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. President Johnson named J. Russell Wiggins to succeed Ball.
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On January 1968, sighting the enemy, the door gunner aboard a Huey helicopter opens fire on a target below in the Mekong Delta.
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An American soldier turns to give instructions as firing continues in front of him.
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Two First Cavalry men support a wounded comrade near Khe Sanh in April 1968.
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A helicopter rescues wounded soldiers from the battlefield. This type of evacuation was known as a dust-off.
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American soldiers in Vietnam keep a lookout over Da Nang airforce base on November 1, 1965.
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Two U.S. Marines search tunnels for signs of Viet Cong activity near Da Nang. The Viet Cong had an extensive network of underground tunnels that they used to launch attacks against U.S. forces.
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U.S. Navy rockets flash from beneath the wings of a Phantom F-4 during an attack on a Viet Cong position.
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American Marines enjoy a quiet moment in their bunker near Khe Sanh.
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The Navy's Patrol Air Cushion Vehicle (PACV) was introduced during the Vietnam War. It was used for assault missions, search and rescue, high-speed troop transportation and logistic support.
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Soldiers pray with the army chaplain on the front lines of the Vietnam War.
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Marines arrive by landing craft at Da Nang, where U.S. forces were stationed to mobilize against Viet Cong guerrillas.
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A cargo plane sprays Agent Orange over a forest in North Vietnam. Agent Orange was a blend of herbicides used to defoliate forests where Viet Cong forces were based.
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