Page 12 - Anthology

VIET NAM WAR
1955 – 1975

“In 1968 I went to Vietnam with all my belongings in one duffle bag.
In 1969 I came home with the same duffle bag, plus six other items:
Nasty memories, diabetes, Parkinson’s, PTSD, depression and chronic pain.”
Charles R. Heathcock
Stand Down Vietnam – Ghosts from The Past

“The Vietnam War in Vietnam also known as the American War, was a Cold War-era proxy war that
occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from December 1956 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975.
This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam—supported by the
Soviet Union, China and other communist allies—and the government of South Vietnam—supported by
the United States and other anti-communist countries. The Viet Cong (also known as the National
Liberation Front, or NLF), a lightly armed South Vietnamese communist common front directed by the
North, fought a guerrilla war against anti-communist forces in the region.

In the course of the war, the U.S. conducted a large-scale strategic bombing campaign against North
Vietnam, and over time the North Vietnamese airspace became the most heavily defended airspace of
any in the world.

U.S. government viewed American involvement in the war as a way to prevent a Communist takeover of
South Vietnam. This was part of a wider containment strategy, with the stated aim of stopping the spread
of communism. According to the U.S. domino theory, if one state went Communist, other states in the
region would follow and U.S. policy thus held that accommodation to the spread of Communist rule
across all of Vietnam was unacceptable. The North Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong were
fighting to reunify Vietnam under communist rule.

Direct U.S. military involvement ended on 15 August 1973 as a result of the Case–Church Amendment
passed by the U.S. Congress. The capture of Saigon at the hands of the North Vietnamese Army in April
1975 marked the end of the war, and North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year. The war
exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities (see Vietnam War casualties). Estimates of the number
of Vietnamese service members and civilians killed vary from 800,000 to 3.1 million. Some 200,000–
300,000 Cambodians, 20,000–200,000 Laotians, and 58,220 U.S. service members also died in the
conflict. ”