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Researched by Aaron R.
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Report
Introduction
The Vietnam War was the longest war that the U.S. ever fought in.
U.S. involvement began in 1957 and finally ended in 1972. It all
began when the country of Nam Viet was split into two different regions,
North and South Vietnam. North Vietnam, having the communist government,
thought that South Vietnam, having the democratic government, should have
a communist government, also. The two countries started to fight for their
rights. North Vietnam got help from the Viet Cong and the Soviet
Union.
U.S. Marine involvement in war
By February 1965, U.S. Army and Marine Corps went into direct
action against the enemy in the central high lands, and targets in the
north were bombed. The U.S. responded with more troops. As
the fighting began, North Vietnam set up radar stations along the bays
and islands of the Gulf of Tokin. On the morning of August 1, 1964,
men aboard the U.S.S. Maddox saw three North Vietnamese patrol boats.
The Maddox was 28 miles from the coast of Vietnam, but still in international
waters. But still the enemy boats were headed straight for them and ready
to attack. Captain John Herrick ordered his men to open fire on the
boats. The first two torpedoes from the patrol boats missed and the
last one didn’t explode. The Maddox fired back. Three Needle
Nose Crusader Jets from the close by carrier, U.S.S C. Turner Joy, came
to help the Maddox. The jets shot machine guns down on the boats.
One of the boats sank and the other two went back to the shore. When
U.S. President Johnson heard about the attack he decided that the patrol
boats had mistaken the Maddox for a foreign ship, so Johnson let the attack
go by, but he ordered the Maddox back to the Gulf. On August 4, 1964, a
storm hit the Gulf with thunder and lightning. The men aboard the
Maddox imagined enemy fire in the darkness. The raiders aboard the
ship showed weird sings on the screens, and the signals showed an enemy
ship. The destroyers fired. The captain of the C. Turner Joy
thought he saw smoke, but didn’t see anything else. After the attack
President Johnson announced that the North Vietnamese boats had attacked
the U.S. again. After that Johnson ordered immediate air strikes against
North Vietnam, and asked Congress if he could have "power to take all necessary
measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the U.S. and to
prevent any further aggression."
The First to Die
The first U.S. men to die in the war were Major Dale R. Buis and Sergeant
Chester M. Ovnaud. They were killed on July 8, 1965, when a group
of men were watching a movie at a base near Bien Hoa, when one of the men
switched on the light a band of Communist Guerillas shot machine guns through
an open window. There were five people killed in the attack, two
of them were Vietnamese guards, an eight-year old Vietnamese boy and the
two U.S. men.
After the first U.S. troops landed at Da Nang, March 1965, more U.S.
troops poured into North and South Vietnam. By December of that year
200,000 U.S. troops had landed, a year later that number had doubled to
400,000 troops.
John F. Kennedy’s Promise
John F. Kennedy, U.S. President before Johnson, promised to the public
was, "we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support
any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival of liberty.’’
By the end of the war, 180,000 North Vietnamese were killed, and 70,000
were captured. There were still a remaining 240,000 communists.
Now, in Washington D.C., there is a memorial honoring the some 58,000 U.S.
men and woman who died in the Vietnam War.
The End of The War
Even though U.S. troops came home in 1972 the war didn’t really end
until 1975 when South Vietnam surrendered. The Vietnam War was the
longest and the only war the U.S. didn’t win.
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