Vietnam War (1965): Ground combat
[259] [desk-vietnam-war-1] On a timeline, write the date and place of Vietnam War before any adjective of victory. Year 1965, line “Ground combat,” figure 1955. Do not read the dead as points. Air power from Rolling Thunder to Linebacker II is a central, contested tool of this war.
The 1954 French defeat at Dien Bien Phu and the Geneva Accords created a "temporary" partition. Diem, with US backing, refused elections that Ho was expected to win. Nation-building in the south was a police and landlord war as much as a development project. The Ho Chi Minh trail through Laos and Cambodia was a logistics system, not a metaphor. Hanoi's decision for armed reunification was made in stages, not in a single 1959 telegram.
After the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident and resolution, Johnson chose open bombing and ground combat in 1965 rather than withdrawal or a wider war with China. Search-and-destroy, free-fire zones, and the CORDS pacification effort were parallel theories of the same war. ROK, Australian, New Zealand, Thai and Philippine forces fought as allies. Their stories are thinner in US film than in their own memorials -- especially the large ROK expeditionary corps.
Tet 1968 attacked cities, including the US embassy compound in Saigon. Militarily the offensive was destroyed; on US television it ended the promise of a short war. Johnson declined to run again. Nixon's Vietnamization and secret bombing of Cambodia widened the regional map. The 27 January 1973 accords withdrew US combat forces and left two Vietnamese armies in place. That was a pause, not a settlement.
The timeline keeps year, place, and what moved. If “Ground combat” is the movement, the figure is 1955 and the year is 1965.1965
Figures to keep
- Year of the action
- 1965
- Figure in the record
- 1955
- Action
- Vietnam War
- Line of the front
- Ground combat
Battle of Waterloo (1815): Late startNext essayAll 1000 essays1000