Casualties in the Vietnam War

The U.S. suffered over 47,000 killed in action plus another 11,000 noncombat
deaths; over 150,000 were wounded and 10,000 missing.

Casualties for the Republic of South Vietnam will never be adequately resolved. Low
estimates calculate 110,000 combat KIA and a half-million wounded. Civilian loss of
life was also very heavy, with the lowest estimates around 415,000.

Similarly, casualty totals among the VC and NVA and the number of dead and wounded
civilians in North Vietnam cannot be determined exactly. In April 1995, Vietnam�s
communist government said 1.1 million combatants had died between 1954 and 1975,
and another 600,000 wounded. Civilian deaths during that time period were estimated
at 2 million, but the U.S. estimate of civilians killed in the north at 30,000.

Among South Vietnam�s other allies, Australia had over 400 killed and 2,400
wounded; New Zealand, over 80 KIA; Republic of Korea, 4,400 KIA; and Thailand 350
killed.

North Vietnam, South Vietnam

Vietnam has a long history of being ruled by foreign powers, and this led many
Vietnamese to see the United States� involvement in their country as neo-
colonialism. China conquered the northern part of modern Vietnam in 111 BC and
retained control until 938 AD; it continued to exert some control over the
Vietnamese until 1885. Originally, Vietnam ended at the 17th parallel, but it
gradually conquered all the area southward along the coastline of the South China
Sea and west to Cambodia. Population in the south was mostly clustered in a few
areas along the coast; the north always enjoyed a larger population. The two
sections were not unlike North and South in the United States prior to the Civil
War; their people did not fully trust each other.

France�s military involvement in Vietnam began when it sent warships in 1847,

ostensibly to protect Christians from the ruling emperor Gia Long. Before the
1880s, the French controlled Vietnam. In the early 20th century, Vietnamese
nationalism began to rise, clashing with the French colonial rulers. By the time of
World War II, a number of groups sought Vietnamese independence but as Vo Nguyen
Giap�who would build Vietnam�s post�WWII army�expressed it, the communists were the
best organized and most action-oriented of these groups.

During the Second World War, Vichy France could do little to protect its colony
from Japanese occupation. Post-war, the French tried to re-establish control but
faced organized opposition from the Viet Minh (short for Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh
Hoi, or League for the Independence of Vietnam), led by Ho Chi Minh and Giap. The
French suffered a major defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, leading to negotiations
that ended with the Geneva Agreements, July 21, 1954. Under those agreements,
Cambodia and Laos�which had been part of the French colony�received their
independence. Vietnam, however, was divided at the 17th parallel. Ho Chi Minh led a
communist government in the north (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) with its capital
at Hanoi, and a new Republic of South Vietnam was established under President Ngo
Dinh Diem, with its capital at Saigon.

The division was supposed to be temporary: elections were to be held in both

sections in 1956 to determine the country�s future. When the time came, however,
Diem resisted the elections; the more populous north would certainly win. Hanoi re-
activated the Viet Minh to conduct guerilla operations in the south, with the
intent of destabilizing President Diem�s government. In July 1959, North Vietnam�s
leaders passed an ordinance called for continued socialist revolution in the north
and a simultaneous revolution in South Vietnam.

Some 80,000 Vietnamese from the south had moved to the north after the Geneva
Agreements were signed. (Ten times as many Vietnamese had fled the north, where the
Communist Party was killing off its rivals, seizing property, and oppressing the
large Catholic population.) A cadre was drawn from those who went north; they were
trained, equipped and sent back to the south to aid in organizing and guiding the
insurgency. (Some in the North Vietnamese government thought the course of war in
the south was unwise, but they were overruled.) Although publicly the war in the
south was described as a civil war within South Vietnam, it was guided, equipped
and reinforced by the communist leadership in Hanoi. The insurgency was called the
National Liberation Front (PLF); however, its soldiers and operatives became more
commonly known by their opponents as the Viet Cong (VC), short for Vietnamese
Communists. The VC were often supplemented by units of the People�s Army of Vietnam
(PAVN), more often called simply the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) by those fighting
against it. Following the Tet Offensive of 1968, the NVA had to assume the major
combat role because the VC was decimated during the offensive.

United States Military Advisors in Vietnam

The U.S., which had been gradually exerting influence after the departure of the
French government, backed Diem in order to limit the area under communist control.
Mao Zedong�s Communist Party had won the Chinese Civil War in 1949, and western
governments�particularly that of the U.S�feared communist expansion throughout
Southeast Asia. This fear evolved into the �Domino Theory�; if one country fell to
communist control, its neighbors would also soon fall like a row of dominos. The
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) advised that was not the case�America had a
strong military presence in the Pacific that would serve as a deterrent. Earlier,
�Wild Bill� Donovan, head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the World War
II forerunner of the CIA, had also advised that the U.S. had nothing to gain and
much to lose by becoming involved in what was then French Indochina.

A different feeling prevailed among many within the U.S. government. The communist
takeover of China and subsequent war in Korea (1950-53) against North Korean and
Chinese troops had focused a great deal of attention on Southeast Asia as a place
to take a strong stand against the spread of communism. During President Dwight
Eisenhower�s administration (1953�1961), financial aid was given to pay South
Vietnam�s military forces and American advisors were sent to help train them. The
first American fatality was Air Force Technical Sergeant Richard B. Fitzgibbon,
Jr., killed June 8, 1956. (His son, Marine Corps lance corporal Richard Fitzgibbon
III would be killed in action in Vietnam September 7, 1965. They were the only
father-son pair to die in Vietnam.) In July 1959 Major Dale Buis and Master
Sergeant Chester Ovnand were off duty when they were killed during an attack at
Bien Hoa.

Ho Chi Minh had been educated in Paris. There is considerable debate over whether
he was primarily nationalist or communist, but he was not especially anti-Western.
(An American medic treated him during World War II, probably saving his life.) Ho
attempted to contact Eisenhower to discuss Vietnam but received no answer. �Ike�
may not have seen the message, but at any rate he was focused on establishing NATO
(North Atlantic Treaty Organization) as a wall against additional communist
advances in Europe and was intent on securing France�s participation in NATO. That
would have made any negotiation with Ho politically ticklish. A lingering question
of the war is what might have happened if Eisenhower and Ho had arranged a meeting;
possibly, an accord could have been reached, or possibly Ho was simply seeking to
limit American involvement, in order to more easily depose the Diem government.

American Military Involvement Escalates

American involvement began to escalate under President John F. Kennedy�s
administration (January 1961�November 1963). North Vietnam, had by then established
a presence in Laos and developed the Ho Chi Minh Trail through that country in
order to resupply and reinforce its forces in South Vietnam. Kennedy saw American
efforts in Southeast Asia almost as a crusade and believed increasing the military
advisor program, coupled with political reform in South Vietnam, would strengthen
the south and bring peace. Two U.S. helicopter units arrived in Saigon in 1961. The
following February a �strategic hamlet� program began; it forcibly relocated South
Vietnamese peasants to fortified strategic hamlets. Based on a program the British
had employed successfully against insurgents in Malaya, it didn�t work in Vietnam.
The peasants resented being forced from their ancestral lands, and consolidating
them gave the VC better targets. The program, which had been poorly managed, was
abandoned after about two years, following the coup that deposed Diem.

Diem fell from favor with his American patrons, partly over disagreements in how to
handle the war against the VC and partly because of his unpopular suppression of
religious sects and anyone he feared threatened his regime. Buddhists, who
comprised South Vietnam�s majority, claimed Diem, a Catholic, favored citizens of
his religion in distributing aid. He, in turn, called the Buddhists VC
sympathizers. On June 11, 1963, an elderly Buddhist monk named Thich Quang Duc sat
down in the street in front of a pagoda in Saigon to protest Diem�s policies. Two
younger monks poured a mix of gasoline and jet fuel over him and, as the three had
planned, set fire to him. Associated Press correspondent Malcolm �Mal� Browne
photographed him sitting quietly in the lotus position as the flames consumed him.
The photo was published worldwide under the title �The Ultimate Protest,� raising
(or in some cases reinforcing) doubts about the government that the democratic
United States was supporting. Seven more such immolations occurred that year. To
make matters worse, Diem responded by sending troops to raid pagodas.

In November, a coup deposed Diem, with the blessing of Kennedy�s administration,

which had quietly assured South Vietnam�s military leaders it was not adverse to a
change in leadership and military aid would continue. The administration was caught
by surprise, however, when Diem was murdered during the coup, which was led by
General Duong Van Minh. This began a series of destabilizing changes in government
leadership.

That same month, Kennedy himself was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. His successor,
Lyndon Baines Johnson, inherited the Vietnam situation. Johnson wanted to focus on
instituting �Great Society� programs at home, but Vietnam was a snake he did not
dare let go of. His political party, the Democrats, had been blamed for China
falling to communism; withdrawing from Vietnam could hurt them in the 1964
elections. On the other hand, Congress had never declared war and so the president
was limited in what he could do in Southeast Asia.