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Saigon, June 11, 1963 Buddhist monk Quang Duc burned himself in protest against the persecution of Buddhists by the Government of South Vietnam. (AP Photo/Malcolm Browne)

 January 9, 1964 a soldier of the Army of South Vietnam stabs a farmer, assuming that he was lying on the movements of the Viet Cong - North Vietnamese soldiers. (AP Photo/Horst Faas)

March 1964. A Vietnamese man with a the body of his dead child asks for help from rather disinterested South Vietnamese soldiers

Hovering U.S. Army helicopters pour machine gun fire into a tree line to cover the advance of South Vietnamese ground troops in an attack on a Viet Cong camp 18 miles north of Tay Ninh, northwest of Saigon near the Cambodian border, in Vietnam on March 1965. (AP Photo/Horst Faas)

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident was the two naval skirmishes between North Vietnam’s torpedo boats and the United States Navy destroyers. It took place in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin on August 2 and August 4, 1964. On August 2, 1964, while conducting intelligence-collecting operations in hostile waters off the coast of North Vietnam, the US destroyer USS Maddox was attacked by three North Vietnamese Navy torpedo boats of the 135th Torpedo Squadron.

As the North Vietnamese boats approached, shooting 50mm shells as they bore down on the USS Maddox, the Amercian crew fired three warning shots, but the torpedo boats continued to advance. The Maddox then opened fire on the approaching boats with torpedoes being fired by both the North Vietnamese and the US ships. As the North Vietnamese boats were heavily damaged, they returned to shore. Only one shell had hit the US destroyer.

On August 4, 1964, two US destroyers were again attacked in the middle of the Gulf of Tonkin. Radar images on the C Turner Joy indicated that they were being approached by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. Both the Maddox and the C Turner Joy fired repeatedly into the stormy night. Later that day the commander of the ships said that he was not certain of this second torpedos attack, but the next day he told Secretary of Defence Robert S McNamara that he was definitely sure that they had been attacked.

When he was notified of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, President Lyndon B Johnson decided that he needed the support of Congress in order to act. On August 4, he had lunch with the National Security Council to discuss the situation in Vietnam. He was given approval for a proposed air strike, which was carried out the next day. The President announced the action on television as strategic North Vietnamese targets were destroyed including a petroleum storage unit in the town of Vinh.

The outcome of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident was the passage by Congress of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted President Johnson the authority to assist any Southeast Asian country whose government was considered to be jeopardized by communist aggression. Congress passed the resolution with the understanding that it would be consulted if the war escalated and particularly if ground troops were to be used in South Vietnam.

A BOMB BLAST: March 30, 1965. The scene immediately after a bomb attack on the American embassy in Saigon. Many Vietnamese and two Americans died.

An unknown American soldier

September 25, 1965. A raid to find Viet Cong in the jungle area Ben Cat, South Vietnam. (AP Photo/Henri Huet)

 November 27, 1965 A Vietnamese orderly  covers his nose, so as not to feel the stench, as he passes  bodies of American and Vietnamese soldiers killed in battle with the Vietcong in the Michelin rubber plantation, about 45 miles northeast of Saigon

 January 1, 1966 Women and children hide in a ditch to save themselves from the intense bombardment by the Viet Cong, at Bao Trai, about 20 miles west of Saigon. (AP Photo/Horst Faas)

  July 15, 1966 An American  CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter, downed by enemy ground forces during Operation Hastings south of the demilitarized zone between North and South Vietnam, The helicopter crashed and exploded on a hill, killing one crew member and 12 Marines. Three crew members escaped with severe burns,. (AP Photo/Horst Faas)

 A young Marine private waits on the beach during the Marine landing, Da Nang, Vietnam, August 3, 1965.

 A napalm strike erupts in a fireball near U.S. troops on patrol in South Vietnam in 1966 during the Vietnam War. (AP Photo)

 June 15, 1967 American soldiers peer out of the trench to evade Viet Cong snipers during fighting in the north-east of Saigon. (AP Photo/Henri Huet)

 1966. Near the Cambodian border. A dead American soldier is lifted onto a helicopter hovering above

June 1967. Medic James Callahan tries desperately to save a badly injured soldier during a battle north of Saigon.

1966 U.S. Army helicopters supporting ground forces, at a base fifty miles north-east of Saigon. (AP Photo/Henri Huet)

 Jan. 23, 1967 A terrified VC prisoner awaiting interrogation unit of special forces A-109 Thuong Duc, 25 kilometers west from Da Nang, Vietnam. (AFP PHOTO/National Archives)

 A marine helps his wounded comrade to cover despite North Vietnamese fire during battle on May 15, 1967

BEFORE: South Vietnamese forces escort suspected Viet Cong officer Nguyen Van Lem (also known as Bay Lop) on a Saigon street Feb. 1, 1968, early in the Tet Offensive. (AP Photo/Eddie Adams

 DURING: 1 February 1968 the national police chief of South Vietnam, General Nguyen Ngoc Loan shooting  the enemy suspect in the head


AFTER: The victim falls dead on the ground and police chief calmly puts the gun back

June 8, 1972 bombs with a mixture of napalm and white phosphorous dropped dropped by South Vietnamese Skyraider bombers , explode in a village not far from the Cao Dai temple in the outskirts of Trang Bang.  In the foreground are Vietnamese soldiers and correspondents of several international news agencies.

Terrified burnt children run away from the scene

The South Vietnamese soldiers tend to the children

November 20, 1972 Unaware of the impending enemy attack a photographer captures an image of a South Vietnamese infantryman in the Hai Van, south of Hue. While the camera followed the explosion,  the soldier had no time to react.

 March 1975. A Vietnamese woman is evacuated from an area 235 miles north east of Saigon moments before the NVA/Viet Cong overran it

South Vietnamese marines line beaches and swim out to ships, fleeing from the northern port city of Da Nang on March 29, 1975 before its fall to the Viet Cong and north Vietnamese. This picture was taken as some marines successfully fled, abandoning scores of weapons, vehicles and even a helicopter. In the foreground, men on LSTs (Landing Ship, Tank) prepare to throw rope to marines coming up on inner tubes. Only a fraction of the city's 100,000 defenders were evacuated before its fall. (AP Photo)

 North Vietnamese troops run across the tarmac of Tan Son Nhat air base in Saigon as smoke billows behind abandoned U.S. Air Force transport planes April 30, 1975. The taking of Saigon marked the fall of the U.S.-backed south and the end to a decade of fighting. (Vietnam News Agency/REUTERS)

April 29, 1975 Vietnamese people  trying to climb over the wall of the American Embassy in Saigon, hoping to get onto a helicopter, as the last Americans leave Vietnam. (AP Photo/Neal Ulevich)

 April 29, 1975 Staff of USS Blue Ridge push a helicopter from the deck of a ship at sea, to free up space for evacuation flights from Saigon.

 April 29, 1975 A Vietnamese woman with her three children sitting on the deck of an American amphibious assault ship during the evacuation from Saigon. (AP Photo)

 VICTORY FOR THE NVA: April 30, 1975. As the Americans left a North Vietnamese tank breaks through the gate of the presidential palace in Saigon.

“Soldiers went berserk, gunning down unarmed men, women, children and babies. Families which huddled together for safety in huts or bunkers were shown no mercy. Those who emerged with hands held high were murdered. ... Elsewhere in the village, other atrocities were in progress. Women were gang raped; Vietnamese who had bowed to greet the Americans were beaten with fists and tortured, clubbed with rifle butts and stabbed with bayonets. Some victims were mutilated with the signature "C Company" carved into the chest. By late morning word had got back to higher authorities and a cease-fire was ordered. My Lai was in a state of carnage. Bodies were strewn through the village.”
BBC News




“The first time the Americans came the children followed them and they gave the children sweets to eat then they smiled and left. The second time we poured them water to drink , the third time they killed everyone, killed everybody and destroyed everything, nothing was left.” 
Anonymous Vietnamese woman witness on BBC News




By 1968 the Vietnam War was well underway, and it was not going very well. People were beginning to question the war, and soldiers’ morale was dropping decidedly. Despite their unease, they were still soldiers taught to follow orders without question. Their purpose in Vietnam was to find the enemy and eliminate them. The higher the body count, the more successful a mission looked. For this reason, soldiers were encouraged to exaggerate their body counts. Also, non-combatant citizens were hard to distinguish from the guerilla warriors, and often were killed alongside them. This increased the anti-American sentiment in the area, and helped contribute to higher tensions between the natives and the American troops.

In December of 1967, Charlie Company, 11th Brigade, American Division arrived in Vietnam. After the Tet Offensive, the U.S. Army was sure the enemy had retreated to a village called “Son My,” which we know now as My Lai. They were instructed to go to the village and kill any insurgents or enemy sympathizers. It was difficult to tell between non-combatant civilians and insurgents, let alone civilians who sympathized with the enemy. Soldiers were told that anyone in the village after 7am could be assumed to be either Viet Cong members or active VC sympathizers - all of which were to be considered the enemy. The rationale was that other civilians would have gone to the public market by that time. Soldiers were instructed to destroy the village. It is debated whether they were instructed to kill women and children as well.



On March 16, 1968, soldiers went into My Lai and found no insurgents. They continued to follow orders, however, and proceeded to kill everyone they came across. Women, children and the elderly made up a lot of the dead. Some were tortured or raped. One platoon, led by Lt. Calley, killed hundreds of people, with Calley himself opening fire on a bunch of the villagers he forced to gather in a ditch. Depending on which source you read, anywhere from between 347 and 504 people.



A U.S. Army helicopter crew flew in a stopped the massacre. Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, Jr., only 24 at the time, landed between the soldiers and the remaining villagers and told the American soldiers that he would open fire on them if they continued with the attacks. He then proceeded in overseeing an evacuation of the village. It was not until thirty years later that Thompson was recognized for his bravery when he received the Soldier’s Medal honoring bravery outside of contact with the enemy.



The incident was kept hushed from Americans until over a year later when some Vietnam veterans wrote letters to representatives that sparked investigative journalists to look into what happened at My Lai, such as the letter written by Ron Ridenhour in the participant accounts section. There were pictures, such as the photo of the soldier setting fire to the village or the photo of the people lying dead in the road, that provided undeniable proof of what went on there. Photos, like the photo of the scared group of Vietnamese women, showed what appeared to be innocent people, who ultimately were considered "the enemy" and thus were killed.

There are stories, such as the peronal account in the participant account section by Ha Thi Qui, that back up these pictures. The American public was shocked and horrified. Political cartoons, like this one in the editorial cartoons section of this site, mocked the American public's apparent loss of conscience during the My Lai incident.



Publications like the National Lampoon also satirized the My Lai incident and the court martial hearings following inquiries over what really happened there.




Though it happened more than 30 years ago, the My Lai massacre is still satirized today, which is seen in the Faux News screen shot in the editorial cartoons section.




In 1970, Lt. Calley was court marshaled and in 1971 convicted of premeditated murder for which he was sentenced a life term in jail. President Nixon, however, ordered him released from prison days later. Lt. Calley ended up only serving three and a half years house arrest for the crimes he was found to commit. Everyone else that was originally court marshaled got off untouched.

Text Source

The injured being rushed to the medical camp

Interrogating a Vietcong.
The helicopters are everywhere in Vietnam. It seems the helicopters has become synonymous with the Vietnam war

VIETNAM WAR VIDEO

MYTHS AND FACTS ABOUT THE VIETNAM WAR (Source: uswings.com)

Myth: Common belief is that most Vietnam veterans were drafted.
Fact: 2/3 of the men who served in Vietnam were volunteers. 2/3 of the men who served in World War II were drafted. Approximately 70% of those killed in Vietnam were volunteers.

Myth: The media have reported that suicides among Vietnam veterans range from 50,000 to 100,000 - 6 to 11 times the non-Vietnam veteran population.
Fact: Mortality studies show that 9,000 is a better estimate. "The CDC Vietnam Experience Study Mortality Assessment showed that during the first 5 years after discharge, deaths from suicide were 1.7 times more likely among Vietnam veterans than non-Vietnam veterans. After that initial post-service period, Vietnam veterans were no more likely to die from suicide than non-Vietnam veterans. In fact, after the 5-year post-service period, the rate of suicides is less in the Vietnam veterans' group.

Myth: Common belief is that a disproportionate number of blacks were killed in the Vietnam War.
Fact: 86% of the men who died in Vietnam were Caucasians, 12.5% were black, 1.2% were other races. Sociologists Charles C. Moskos and John Sibley Butler, in their recently published book "All That We Can Be," said they analyzed the claim that blacks were used like cannon fodder during Vietnam "and can report definitely that this charge is untrue. Black fatalities amounted to 12 percent of all Americans killed in Southeast Asia, a figure proportional to the number of blacks in the U.S. population at the time and slightly lower than the proportion of blacks in the Army at the close of the war."

Myth: Common belief is that the war was fought largely by the poor and uneducated.
Fact: Servicemen who went to Vietnam from well-to-do areas had a slightly elevated risk of dying because they were more likely to be pilots or infantry officers. Vietnam Veterans were the best educated forces our nation had ever sent into combat. 79% had a high school education or better.

Myth: The common belief is the average age of an infantryman fighting in Vietnam was 19.
Fact: Assuming KIAs accurately represented age groups serving in Vietnam, the average age of an infantryman (MOS 11B) serving in Vietnam to be 19 years old is a myth, it is actually 22. None of the enlisted grades have an average age of less than 20. The average man who fought in World War II was 26 years of age.

Myth: The common belief is that the domino theory was proved false.
Fact: The domino theory was accurate. The ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand stayed free of Communism because of the U.S. commitment to Vietnam. The Indonesians threw the Soviets out in 1966 because of America's commitment in Vietnam. Without that commitment, Communism would have swept all the way to the Malacca Straits that is south of Singapore and of great strategic importance to the free world. If you ask people who live in these countries that won the war in Vietnam, they have a different opinion from the American news media. The Vietnam War was the turning point for Communism.

Myth: The common belief is that the fighting in Vietnam was not as intense as in World War II.
Fact: The average infantryman in the South Pacific during World War II saw about 40 days of combat in four years. The average infantryman in Vietnam saw about 240 days of combat in one year thanks to the mobility of the helicopter. One out of every 10 Americans who served in Vietnam was a casualty. 58,148 were killed and 304,000 wounded out of 2.7 million who served. Although the percent that died is similar to other wars, amputations or crippling wounds were 300 percent higher than in World War II. 75,000 Vietnam veterans are severely disabled. MEDEVAC helicopters flew nearly 500,000 missions. Over 900,000 patients were airlifted (nearly half were American). The average time lapse between wounding to hospitalization was less than one hour. As a result, less than one percent of all Americans wounded, who survived the first 24 hours, died. The helicopter provided unprecedented mobility. Without the helicopter it would have taken three times as many troops to secure the 800 mile border with Cambodia and Laos (the politicians thought the Geneva Conventions of 1954 and the Geneva Accords or 1962 would secure the border).

Myth: Kim Phuc, the little nine year old Vietnamese girl running naked from the napalm strike near Trang Bang on 8 June 1972 (shown a million times on American television) was burned by Americans bombing Trang Bang.
Fact: No American had involvement in this incident near Trang Bang that burned Phan Thi Kim Phuc. The planes doing the bombing near the village were VNAF (Vietnam Air Force) and were being flown by Vietnamese pilots in support of South Vietnamese troops on the ground. The Vietnamese pilot who dropped the napalm in error is currently living in the United States. Even the AP photographer, Nick Ut, who took the picture, was Vietnamese. The incident in the photo took place on the second day of a three day battle between the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) who occupied the village of Trang Bang and the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) who were trying to force the NVA out of the village. Recent reports in the news media that an American commander ordered the air strike that burned Kim Phuc are incorrect. There were no Americans involved in any capacity. "We (Americans) had nothing to do with controlling VNAF," according to Lieutenant General (Ret) James F. Hollingsworth, the Commanding General of TRAC at that time. Also, it has been incorrectly reported that two of Kim Phuc's brothers were killed in this incident. They were Kim's cousins not her brothers.

A flame thrower
Not a scene from a film. The guy is guiding the helicopter rescue medical team to land. These guys are from the elite 101st Airborne Division.

VIETNAM WAR VIDEO




Civilians lie dead and a South Vietnamese soldier still sits in his jeep after being shot in the head by a team of hit-and-run Vietcong in 1968. Vietnamese children are running past and looking at the charred and dismembered bodies.
Helicopters land to take away the injured.

A Vietcong POW

An American soldier is alert. At his feet is a dead Vietcong.

The soldier has mixed feelings. On the one hand he is sympathetic and wants to help the woman. On the other hand he knows that she is Vietcong and could cause trouble. That is how an average American soldier felt about the war.

Memorial to the dead.

Passers-by stop to watch as flames envelope a young Buddhist monk, Saigon, October 5th, 1963.

The man sits impassively in the central market square, he has set himself on fire performing a ritual suicide in protest against governmental anti-Buddhist policies. Crowds gathered to protest in Hue after the South Vietnamese government prohibited Buddhists from carrying flags on Buddha's birthday. Government troops opened fire to disperse the dissidents, killing nine people, Diems government blamed the incident on the Vietcong and never admitted responsibility. The Buddhist leadership quickly organized demonstrations that eventually led to seven monks burning themselves to death.

The guy is lighting his cigarette. What indifference!

Luscious, mini-skirted screen-queen Raquel Welch gets help from four enthusiastic GIs as she performs on the Bob Hope Show at Da Nang military base December 18th, 1967। Beautiful Raquel was one of the performers accompanying the popular comedian on his annual overseas Christmas tour that year.

VIDEO: RAQUEL WELCH IN VIETNAM