When is vietnam war

Japan surrenders to Allied forces. But victorious France reassumes colonial authority. Over the course of the war, they grow from small guerilla bands into a well-organized and equipped army. China begins providing the Viet Minh with military advisors and weapons.

Vietnam is temporarily divided between North and South at the 17th parallel 17 degrees north latitude. The Viet Minh are to withdraw north of the line, while troops supporting France are to withdraw to the south. Elections are to be held in to reunify the country.

Diem argues that South Vietnam was not a party to the Geneva Accords, and cancels the elections. The North remains under the control of Ho's Communists, with its government at Hanoi. Communist guerillas begin an insurgency in South Vietnam, assassinating more than South Vietnamese officials. Within a year, Communist forces have settled along the Mekong Delta. Diem calls the group the Vietcong. Diem, a Catholic, has been intolerant of other religions and has tried to silence protests by Buddhist monks.

In response, monks protest by setting themselves on fire in public places. In November, with the tacit approval of the U. On August 2 three North Vietnamese boats allegedly fire torpedoes at the U.

Maddox, a destroyer located in the international waters of the Tonkin Gulf. A second attack was alleged to have taken place on August 4, but government documents later showed that no second incident took place.

On August 7, Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing President Lyndon Johnson to "take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression. The U. The bombing will continue for three years. In March, the first U. By year's end, more than , U. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara calls the bombing campaign ineffective.

They discover a massive system of underground tunnels that had served as headquarters for the Vietcong. In January, on the Vietnamese lunar new year Tet , the North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces launch an attack on one hundred South Vietnamese cities and towns. Within days, U. The "Tet Offensive" is a military defeat for Communists, but is a political victory, as Americans begin questioning the U.

This sprang from a soldierly admiration for their dedication and bravery — qualities difficult to discern in the average government soldier. This particular Viet Cong had fought for three days with his intestines in a cooking bowl strapped onto his stomach. Henri Huet. Henri Huet—AP. Hal Buell, former photography director at the Associated Press, who led their photo operations during the Vietnam War:. In all wars, the battlefield medic is often the stopgap between life and death.

AP photographer Henri Huet, under heavy enemy fire, saw that role through his lens and captured the uncommon dedication that medic Thomas Cole displayed in this memorable photo. Cole, himself wounded, peered beneath his bandaged eye to treat the wounds of a fallen Marine. This photo was only one of several Huet made of Cole that were published on the cover and inside pages of LIFE magazine.

A year later Huet was seriously wounded and was treated by medics until evacuated. In Huet died in a helicopter shot down over Laos. Tim Page. At the same time that Hello Dolly opened at Nha Trang airbase, a company of rd Airborne had walked into an ambush in Viet Cong base zone, known as the Iron Triangle. The dust-offs started coming within 30 minutes. Mostly, I remember carrying a badly wounded grunt whose leg came off and he almost bled out.

The shot was made one-handed as we carried him out of the fire cone. Dirck Halstead. Dirck Halstead—Getty Images. Generally, the photographers who might have shot some of those images have long since bugged out, or have been captured or killed. In mid-April of , a small group of American journalists were invited to fly into the small provincial capital of Xuan Loc, South Vietnam, 35 miles north of Saigon, by commander Le Minh Dao.

A siege by a massive North Vietnamese force was about to take place. The helicopter Dao sent to Saigon to pick us up deposited us just outside the town. Neither we, nor General Dao, had expected the tide of advancing communist forces to so quickly and completely surround the town. General Dao, however, was full of vim and eager for the battle. Slapping a swagger stick along his leg, he quickly loaded the two journalists who had accepted his invitation, myself and UPI reporter Leon Daniel, into a Jeep and barreled into the town.

At first, we thought it was deserted. Then slowly, and one by one, South Vietnamese troopers began to stick their heads out of foxholes they had dug in the streets. Dao yelled that they were prepared to fight the enemy, come what may. However, we noted with more than a little trepidation that none of them were budging from their holes as Dao led us down the dusty street.

Suddenly, a mortar shell landed in the dust no more than 10 feet from us. It was followed by a barrage of incoming automatic weapon and artillery rounds. Dao wisely called an end to his press tour. We tore back to a landing zone that we had arrived at less than an hour later. Dao called in a helicopter to evacuate us, but suddenly, the ARVN troops who had been seated alongside the road broke and ran for the incoming helos. In less time than it takes to tell, the panicked soldiers swarmed into the helicopter, which was to be our only way out.

Crewmen tried to turn them back, but the helicopter lurched into the air with two soldiers hanging from the skids. At that moment, Leon and I had a sinking feeling that we were going to be part of the fall of Xuan Loc. For us, the war looked like it was about to be over.

However, Dao had one more trick up his sleeve, and he called in his personal helicopter behind his headquarters. Joe Galloway. At the moment I hit the button I did not recognize the GI who was dashing across the clearing to load the body of a comrade aboard the waiting Huey helicopter. Later I realized that I had shot a photo, in the heat of battle, of my childhood friend from the little town of Refugio, Texas.

Vince Cantu and I went through school together right to graduation with the Refugio High School Class of — a total of 55 of us.

The next time I saw Vince was on that terrible bloody ground in the la Drang. Each of us was terribly afraid that the other was going to be killed in the next minutes. His bosses read the papers and discovered they had a real hero pushing one of their buses. So they made Vince a Supervisor and all he did from then to retirement was stand in the door with a clipboard checking buses in and out. Larry Burrows. The fraction of a second captured in most photographs is just that: a snapshot of a moment in time.

Sometimes, even in war, that moment can tell a whole story with clarity, but it can be ambiguous too. Purdie was being restrained from turning back to aid his CO. The scene is as wretched as the other. Purdie, wounded for the third time in the war, was about to be flown to a hospital ship off the Vietnamese coast and leave that country for his last time.

The composition of the photograph has been compared to the work of the old masters, but some see it more cinematically: as if you could run a film backwards and forwards to view more of the story. Exhibiting museums have found in it Christian iconography.

And at least one psychiatrist treating war veterans has used it in his practice. Unknowable then was also the life Purdie would live after his 20 years in the Marine Corps, or how important to him faith would become. David Hume Kennerly. Long-forgotten photographs sometimes leap out at me and I am stunned by certain moments that I documented that were so routine when I made them, but are now infused with new emotion and meaning. This picture of a haunted-looking young American GI taking refuge under a poncho from monsoon rains in the jungles outside of Da Nang while on patrol in is one of them.

Many had that intense blaze of realization when a comrade was suddenly, violently, unexpectedly gone, and marveled at still being left intact. What was his next act, and what happened after he returned from Vietnam? Paul Schutzer. Paul got carried away with all the emotions that happen in war, and he was right in there with the soldiers in battles.

There were a number of long-term and short-term reasons to explain why the USA became involved in Vietnam in the late s. During World War Two it had been invaded by Japan. Ho Chi Minh was the leader of the Vietminh, a resistance army which fought for Vietnamese independence. The French tried to take control again, but this was unpopular with the people. They were defeated by the Vietminh at Dien Bien Phu in Peace was discussed at Geneva in and the Treaty of Geneva agreed that the French would leave Vietnam and the country would be split along the 17th Parallel until elections could be held.

The elections were never held and the country remained divided:. The Vietminh wanted to unite the country under communist leader Ho Chi Minh. War broke out between the North and South.