In 2017, U.S. President Donald J. Trump signed the National Vietnam Veterans Day Act. By this act every March 29th Americans would remember the many trials and tribulations the men and women who served between 1955 and 1975 would be remembered.

America’s first involvement came in 1950 when advisory units were first sent to aid the French government in its fight in the Indochina War. The major conflict was between France with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam against the Communist North. That conflict lasted between December 1946 and July in 1954. Over the course of the war, it spread throughout the entire country. French Indochina forces were also the protectorates of Laos and Cambodia.

In July of 1954 the French government at the International Geneva Conference agreed to turn over control of North Vietnam above the 17th parallel. The State of Vietnam and America were not in favor of this agreement between the French and North Vietnam Communist.

With the French withdrawing, South Vietnam was at an uneasy peace with the communist in the north. For ten years American advisors were sent to aid the south and prevent the spread of communism in that part of the world. By 1965 it was clear if America was going to stop the onset of the communist, it had to do it with troops.

From 1965 until March 29 of 1975, Americans fought and died in the conflict that was never declared a war. U.S. President John F. Kennedy saw the expansion of communism as a threat to the region. It is important to remember that the early sixties was part of the cold war era. If the Communist North went unchecked, it was feared that democratic governments in South-East Asia would be in danger of being taken over. With China, Russia and Korean governments watching, Kennedy felt he had no choice but to prevent South Vietnam falling to communist control.

Kennedy’s first effort was to prevent the north from crossing the 17th parallel. In 1963 before his assassination, he had deployed 16,000 troops into the country. By the end of the following year under U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, 23,000 and by the end of 1965, 184,000 were in the country.

In 1964 North Vietnam forces attacked American ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. President Johnson was given the authority by congress to do whatever was necessary to protect American forces.

By 1967, nearly a half million American soldiers were fighting in Vietnam. Not only were America’s in combat, but over three quarters of a million south Vietnam soldiers were fighting the north. Nearly 7,000 Australians and 5,000 Koreans, 500 from New Zealand and 2,000 Filipino soldiers.

North Vietnam drafted many of its soldiers. In 1965 they had an army of nearly 300,000 battle hardened regular troops. During the course of the war, they were aided by nearly two million self-defense forces. Many of these civilians’ soldiers joined the north believing Americans were coming to take over their country. They saw it as a fight to save their home land from invaders. From the French in the early 50s through 1975 when America was in the country, millions served. It is estimated over one million Vietnamese were killed during the fighting. America lost over 58,000 to their injuries. Still to this day, 53 years later, those who served are still suffering and dying from their time in the service of our country.

On a cold February evening in 1968, News anchor Walter Cronkite delivered to the American People his opinion of the war that he had seen firsthand, and up close. It was a time when reporters only told facts and gave no opinions. Cronkite believed the American people needed to know how the impossible war was going and why soldiers were dying every day. Those words were spoken 57 years ago and began to change how America saw the war. The government had filled the news with enemy body counts and victories. But in reality, the soldiers were fighting and dying in a stalemate. It would be until five years later and those more deaths that the war ended for those on the front line. Yet still today the war is part of those long-ago soldiers’ lives still today.

Over the next two weeks, my stories will be about a couple young men who saw the war first hand back in the mid-60s. The first, a Green Beret who went to Vietnam in 1964. He saw the war beginning to escalate and the challenge that lay ahead for the Mountain people of Vietnam. He saw the coming war as he looked Through the Lens.