Saturday, April 15, 1967: Spring Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam

Tens of thousands of people march in anti-war rallies in New York and San Francisco. The rallies themselves were evidence of Americans' ever-increasing disenchantment with the Vietnam War, while an instance of flag burning in New York's Central Park (pictured above) was a pivotal event in leading to a 1968 flag desecration law. 

     -- Photo by New York Daily News

Vietnam protests

* Summary (www.vietnamwar.net): @

* Summary ("The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War," edited by Spencer C. Tucker, 2011): @

* San Francisco summary, photos (Harvey Richards Media Archive): @

* Pamphlet (NYU Archives Collection): @

* Various documents (The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change): @

Flag burning

* "Flag-burning overview" (First Amendment Center): @
* "State flag-protection laws" (First Amendment Center): @

* "Timeline of Flag Desecration Issues" (www.ushistory.org): @
* "The Flag Bulletin; Two Centuries of Burning Flags, A Few Years of Blowing Smoke" (New York Times, 1995): @

* Text of flag desecration law (July 5, 1968): @

* "Congress Passes Flag Protection Act" (Today in Civil Liberties History): @

* "Flag Burning: Moral Panic and the Criminalization of Protest" (Michael Welch, 2000): @

* "Flag Burning and Free Speech: The case of Texas v. Johnson" (Robert Justin Goldstein, 2000): @
* "Flag Protection: A Brief History of Recent Supreme Court Decisions and Proposed Constitutional Amendment" (Congressional Research Service, 2001): @
* "Inside the Supreme Court's flag burning decision" (National Constitution Center): @ 

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Tuesday, April 4, 1967: 'Beyond Vietnam'

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. makes his most public and comprehensive statement against the Vietnam War. Addressing a crowd of 3,000 people in New York City’s Riverside Church, King delivers a speech entitled “Beyond Vietnam.” King points out that the war effort is “taking the young black men who have been crippled by our society and sending them 13,000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.” Although some activists and newspapers supported King’s statement, most responded with criticism. King’s civil rights colleagues began to disassociate themselves from his radical stance, and the NAACP issued a statement against merging the civil rights movement and peace movement. 

     -- From "A Time To Break Silence: The Essential Works of Martin Luther King Jr. for Students" (The Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University): @

* Text and audio (American Rhetoric): @

* Text and audio (King Research and Education Institute): @

* Summary (King Research and Education Institute): @

* "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (et al.) speak on the war in Vietnam" (booklet, 1967): @

* "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam" (King speech, April 30, 1967; typed speech from The King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Atlanta, Georgia): @

* "King's FBI File -- Riverside Church Speech on Vietnam" (American RadioWorks): @ 
* "When Martin Luther King Came Out Against Vietnam" (The New York Times, 2017): @

* "Martin Luther King's Searing Antiwar Speech, Fifty Years Later" (The New Yorker, 2017): @

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November 1965: 'Flower power'

Written by poet-activist Allen Ginsberg and published in the Berkeley Barb on November 19, 1965. Ginsberg was talking about tactics that might be used during an antiwar demonstration scheduled for November 20 in Berkeley and Oakland, California. Ginsberg did not use the term "flower power" in this piece; the counterculture catchphrase, along with "flower child," would come into wider use in 1967.

* "10,000 Marchers Protest Policy" (Associated Press, November 20): @

* Summary from "1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music" (Andrew Grant Jackson, 2015): @
* Berkeley Barb archives: @ 
* Allen Ginsberg Project: @

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Sunday, November 14, 1965: Battle of Ia Drang Valley

The Battle of Ia Drang Valley was the first major battle between regular U.S. and People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) troops. The two-part battle occurred at landing zones X-Ray and Albany in Ia Drang Valley, Central Highlands of South Vietnam. Despite heavy casualties on both sides, both claimed the battle was a victory. The battle was considered essential as it set the blueprint for tactics for both sides. American troops continued to reply on air mobility and artillery fire, while the Viet Cong learned that by quickly engaging their combat forces close to the enemy, they could neutralize American advantages.

     -- Summary from thevietnamwar.info

     -- Photo by Peter Arnett for The Associated Press. Caption: U.S. cavalrymen carry a fellow soldier to an evacuation zone after he was seriously wounded in a North Vietnamese ambush in South Vietnam's Ia Drang Valley, mid-November 1965. A battalion of the U.S. 1st Air Cavalry Division was ambushed while marching from the jungle clearing where the Ia Drang Valley fighting started Nov. 14, 1965. 

Postscript: November 30

* Memorandum from Secretary of Defense McNamara to President Johnson: @

* "The Battle of Ia Drang Valley" is broadcast on CBS. Summary: @. Video: @

Resources

* "Heavy Fighting Near Cambodia" (Peter Arnett, AP, November 15, 1965): @

* Summary from "Atlas of American Military History" (2003): @

* Summary from "The Vietnam War" (Andrew Weist, 2009): @

* Summary from "Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War" (2011): @

* Summary from www.history.com: @

* "After Action Report, Ia Drang Valley Operation, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, 14-16 November 1965" (Donovan Research Library, Fort Benning, Georgia): @

* "The Battle at LZ Albany" (Infantry Online, U.S. Army): @

* "Rescue at LZ Albany" (www.historynet.com, 2006): @
* "Fight at Ia Drang" (U.S. Army Center of Military History): @
* "Ia Drang -- The Battle That Convinced Ho Chi Minh He Could Win" (Joseph Galloway, www.historynet.com, 2010): @

* "Death in the Ia Drang Valley" (Jack P. Smith, Saturday Evening Post, January 28, 1967): @ 
* "Battle at Ia Drang" (video, National Geographic): @

* "Vietnam at 50: 1965" (Stars and Stripes): @

* www.lzxray.com (companion site to the 1992 book "We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young"): @

* Other resources (Lehigh University Digital Library): @ 

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Tuesday, November 2, 1965: Norman Morrison

     A pacifist sacrificed himself in flames in front of the Pentagon. His widow said he gave his life "protesting our government's deep military involvement" in Viet Nam.

     Norman R. Morrison, a Baltimore Quaker, clutched his year-old daughter Emily in one arm late Tuesday as he began to burn. Screams of "drop the baby" from onlookers may have saved her life, for she fell uninjured to the ground.

     Morrison, 31, drenched himself in kerosene and kindled himself as a human torch in full view of hundreds of Defense Department workers and military men.

     -- Story from Associated Press: @

     -- Photo from Associated Press. Original caption: Mrs. Anne Morrison carries her 18-month-old daughter, Emily, from Fort Myer, Va., U.S. Army Dispensary, November 2, 1965, returning to her home in Baltimore, Md. Earlier in the evening her husband, Norman Morrison, a Quaker, with the baby Emily in his arms doused his clothes with a flammable fluid and set himself afire outside the Pentagon. Morrison dropped the baby before he was engulfed and she was not injured, but Morrison was dead on arrival at the dispensary. Mrs. Morrison issued a statement that her husband was protesting U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.

* Summary from "Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War" (2011): @

* "The Fiery Pangs of Conscience" (Loudon Wainwright, Life magazine, November 12, 1965; page 34): @

* "The Sacrifice of Norman Morrison" (Alice Steinbach, Baltimore Sun, July 1995): @
* "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam" (Robert S. McNamara, 1995): @

* "The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War" (Paul Hendrickson, 1996): @
* Excerpt from "Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides" (Christian G. Appy, 2003): @ 
* "Held in the Light: Norman Morrison's Sacrifice for Peace and His Family's Journey of Healing" (Anne Morrison Welsh, 2008): @ 

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Friday, October 15, 1965: David Miller burns his draft card

Tuesday, August 31

President Johnson signed into law Tuesday legislation to prohibit the destruction of draft cards. The measure is an outgrowth of student protests against U.S. policy in Viet Nam. The bill, introduced by Rep. L. Mendel Rivers, D-S.C., was rushed through Congress following reports persons had burned or ripped up their draft cards in protest against the Viet Nam War. The new law makes any person found guilty of destroying the wallet-size Selective Service cards subject to a $10,000 fine or a five-year prison term. Alteration and forgery of drafts cards already is a federal offense, punishable by fines of up to $10,000 and jail terms of up to five years.

     -- United Press International; full text of law (Government Printing Office): @

Friday, October 15

At an anti-war rally in New York, David Miller burns his draft card. Miller would be arrested three days later, becoming the first person charged under the new law. (After a lengthy court battle, he would serve 22 months in federal prison starting in June 1968.)

     -- Photo from Corbis Images

* "Memoirs of a Draft-Card Burner" (Miller, 2002): @

* "Draft Card Burner Arrested by F.B.I." (October 18, 1965): @

* "A Serious To-Do About a Silly Law" (Loudon Wainwright, Life magazine, March 4, 1966): @
* "Card Burner Raps Penalty" (Associated Press, March 15, 1966): @
* United States v. Miller (decided October 13, 1966; from Casetext): @
* "Appeal Rejected by High Court" (UPI, February 13, 1967): @
* "Draft Card Burner Nears 'High Noon' " (Washington Post, July 1967): @
* United States v. O'Brien (decided May 27, 1968; from FindLaw): @
* "Reflections of a Draft Card Burner" (Newspaper Enterprise Association, March 1972): @
* "Confronting the War Machine: Draft Resistance During the Vietnam War" (Michael S. Foley, 2003): @
* Entry from "Encyclopedia of American Civil Liberties" (2006): @

* "America's Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force" (Beth L. Bailey, 2009): @ 
* Entry from "Civil Disobedience: An Encyclopedic History of Dissidence in the United States" (2015): @

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Friday, October 8, 1965: LBJ surgery

President Johnson underwent 2 hours 15 minutes of major surgery Friday for removal of his gall bladder and a kidney stone. Three hours later he was reported "doing well."

     -- Associated Press: @ 

Johnson returned to the White House on October 21. The day before, at Bethesda Naval Hospital, he showed the press his surgical scar. The image would be the basis of a famous cartoon by David Levine, with the scar in the shape of Vietnam (The New York Review of Books, May 12, 1966). Mad magazine would take a similar approach in its January 1968 issue: @

* "Statement by the President That He Would Undergo Surgery" (October 5; American Presidency Project): @ 

* October 8 entry from LBJ Presidential Library: @

* " 'Two Operations for the Price of One' " (Life magazine, October 29): @ 
* David Levine's illustrations for The New York Review of Books: @
* www.davidlevineart.com: @

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Thursday, August 5, 1965: CBS report on Cam Ne, South Vietnam

CBS airs Morley Safer's report on U.S. Marines setting fire to houses in Cam Ne, a village southwest of Da Nang Air Base in South Vietnam. Reaction ranges from unease to outrage (by viewers angry at CBS, as well as by President Johnson in a blistering phone call to CBS President Frank Stanton). The report is considered a milestone moment in media coverage of the Vietnam War.

     -- The incident at Cam Ne took place on August 3, while Safer's report aired on August 5. The story at top appeared August 3 in the Logansport (Indiana) Pharos-Tribune; the photo ran August 7 in The La Crosse (Wisconsin) Tribune.

* Watch the segment (CBS News): @

* Video interview with Safer (Archive of American Television, 2000): @

* Account from Safer (from "Reporting America at War," PBS, 2003): @
* "Marines Ordered to Stop Burning Viet Nam Villages" (Los Angeles Times, August 23, 1965): @

* "What Really Happened at Cam Ne" (www.historynet.com, 2006): @

* "When The World Began Watching" (The Alicia Patterson Foundation, 2011): @

* "The Power and The Profits: Part II" (David Halberstam, The Atlantic magazine, February 1976): @

* "The Powers That Be" (Halberstam, 1975): @

* Video interview with Halberstam (WGBH, 1979): @
* "The 6:00 Follies: Hegemony, Television News, and the War of Attrition" (Elizabeth J. Burnette, American Studies at the University of Virginia, 2005): @
* Excerpt from "The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam" (Daniel C. Hallin, 1986): @

* Excerpt from "The Legacy: The Vietnam War in the American Imagination" (from chapter titled "Vietnam and the Press," Michael X. Delli Carpini; book edited by D. Michael Shafer, 1990): @
* Excerpt from "The Sixties: From Memory to History" (from chapter titled "And That's The Way It Was: The Vietnam War on the Network Nightly News," Chester J. Pach Jr.; book edited by David Farber, 1994): @
* "Excerpt from "The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and Legislative Roles and Relationships, Part IV" (William C. Gibbons, 1995): @

* Excerpt from "The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation" (Tom Engelhardt, 1995): @

* Excerpt from "Encyclopedia of Media and Propaganda in Wartime America" (edited by Martin J. Manning and Clarence R. Wyatt, 2011): @ 

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Wednesday, July 28, 1965: 'This ... is why we are in Vietnam'

President Johnson begins his news conference by announcing plans to increase U.S. troops in the Vietnam War from 75,000 to 125,000, along with doubling the monthly military draft quota from 17,000 to 35,000. He also lays out the reasons for America's increasing involvement, including this passage:

"We did not choose to be the guardians at the gate, but there is no one else. ... Three presidents -- President Eisenhower, President Kennedy, and your present president -- over 11 years have committed themselves and have promised to help defend this small and valiant nation. Strengthened by that promise,  the people of South Vietnam have fought for many long years. Thousands of them have died. Thousands more have been crippled and scarred by war. We just cannot now dishonor our word, or abandon our commitment, or leave those who believed us and who trusted us to the terror and repression and murder that would follow. This, then, my fellow Americans, is why we are in Vietnam." 

Johnson concludes with these words: "... as long as there are men who hate and destroy, we must have the courage to resist, or we will see it all, all that we have built, all that we hope to build, all of our dreams for freedom -- all, all will be swept away on the flood of conquest. So, too, this shall not happen. We will stand in Vietnam."

-- Map detail from "Azimuthal Equidistant Projection Centered on Saigon" (CIA, 1965): @

Resources
* Transcript (from "Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States"): @

* Video & audio (Miller Center, University of Virginia): @

* "Build-Up in Viet Nam" (Toledo Blade, July 25, 1965): @
* "President Doubles Draft Call" (United Press International, July 28, 1965): @

* "LBJ Hikes Draft for Viet Nam War" (Associated Press, July 29): @

* "Johnson Tells Why Vietnam in Pamphlet" (Associated Press, August 24): @

* "Why Viet-Nam" (Department of Defense, 1965; includes remarks from Johnson's news conference; from Internet Archive): @

* "Johnson's Escalation of Vietnam: A Timeline" (Bill Moyers Journal, 2009): @ 
* Excerpt from "Presidents and Protestors: Political Rhetoric in the 1960s" (Theodore Windt, 1990): @
* "McNamara, Clifford, and the Burdens of Vietnam" (Secretaries of Defense Historical Series, 2011): @
* Pentagon Papers (National Archives, 1969): @ 

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Friday, June 18, 1965: 'War is Hell'

Place: South Vietnam

Photographer: Horst Faas

Original caption (from The Associated Press): An unidentified U.S. Army personnel wears a hand-lettered "War Is Hell" slogan on his helmet June 18, 1965, during the Vietnam War. He was with the 173rd Airborne Brigade battalion on defense duty at Phuoc Vinh airstrip in South Vietnam.

The earliest publication date I can find is from July 23, 1967 in various newspapers as part of a story and a block of photos on soldiers' helmets. Caption: That old American individualism comes out even in the jungles of South Vietnam, as the above pictures show. Hats definitely are in fashion when the bullets fly -- and the fashions are as varied as the ingenuity of the GIs. Some are functional -- such as the extra machine gun ammunition around a machine gunner's hat, top left; some are expressive -- such as the "war is hell" band at top center; some are poignant -- like the helmet liner marked off for every day of the wearer's tour in bottom left; and some are nostalgic, such as the helmet featuring the snapshot in bottom center.

Note: In June 2012, the soldier was identified as Larry Wayne Chaffin, who served in 1965-66 (from The Southern Illinoisian: @). 

Horst Faas' Vietnam photos

* From The Denver Post: @

* From The Associated Press: @

Origins of phrase 'War is hell' (General William T. Sherman)

     -- Image from Ohio State Journal, August 12, 1880, on Sherman's speech the day before.
* From "Sherman: A Soldier's Passion for Order" (John F. Marsalek, 2007): @
* From "The Oxford Dictionary of American Quotations" (2006): @
* From "Nashville: The Western Confederacy's Final Gamble" (James L. McDonough, 2004): @ 

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Sunday, May 23, 1965: 'Credibility gap'

The term -- referring to the disparity between the stated justification and the actual reason for U.S. military intervention in the Dominican Republic -- appears as part of a column written by David Wise of the New York Herald Tribune. Wise does not use those exact words; instead, it appears in the headline "Dilemma in 'Credibility Gap.' "  

     -- Clipping from The High Point (N.C.) Enterprise, May 28, 1965

(A May 1 message from Gen. Earle G. Weaver, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to Lt.  Gen. Bruce Palmer Jr., commander of the U.S. forces in the Dominican Republic, summarizes the narratives: "Your announced mission is to save US lives. Your unannounced mission is to prevent the Dominican Republic from going Communist.")

     -- Source: "Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968": @)

     The term gains wider use after Murrey Marder's story in The Washington Post in December 1965: "Creeping signs of doubt and cynicism about administration pronouncements, especially in its foreign policy, are privately troubling some of the government's usually stalwart supporters. The problem could be called a credibility gap. It represents a perceptibly growing disquiet, misgiving or skepticism about the candor or validity of official declarations."

     -- "Doubt Grows Over Administration Statements," as published in the (Mansfield, Ohio) News-Journal, December 7, 1965 (via newspapers.com; subscription only): @

     The term would become closely associated with the Johnson administration's conduct of the Vietnam War, as well as with the words and actions of politicians in general.

Resources
* Entry from "Encyclopedia of American Journalism" (edited by Stephen L. Vaughn, 2008): @

* Entry from "Safire's Political Dictionary" (William Safire, 2008): @

* Entry from "Historical Dictionary of the 1970s" (edited by James S. Olson, 1999): @

* Entry from "History of the Mass Media in the United States: An Encyclopedia" (edited by Margaret A. Blanchard, 1998): @

* "Credibility Gap -- Part 1" (Walter Lippman, March 1967): @

* "Credibility Gap -- Part 2" (Lippman, April 1967): @
* "The Dominican Crisis ... The Hemisphere Acts" (U.S. State Department, October 1965): @
* "Congress, Information and Foreign Affairs" (Prepared for the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations by the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division, Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, 1978): @

* "When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and Its Consequences" (Eric Alterman, 2004): @
* "McNamara, Clifford, and the Burdens of Vietnam, 1965-1969" (Edward J. Drea, Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2011): @ 

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Saturday, April 17, 1965: March on Washington to End the War in Vietnam

Thousands of students demanding an end to the war in Viet Nam massed in Washington Saturday, picketing, singing and shouting for their case. The demonstration, one of the largest ever to take place around the White House, was billed by its sponsors, an organization calling itself Students for a Democratic Society, as the start of a national protest movement against U.S. policy in Viet Nam. Demonstration leaders said 20,000 students responded to the call they sent to colleges across the nation for support. Police estimated the number at 12,000 to 15,000.

-- Excerpt from Associated Press: @

-- Image of flier from  Students for a Democratic Society Papers, 1958-1970: @

* Summary from "Encyclopedia of Student and Youth Movements" via Facts on File: @

* Flier (The King Center): @

* Paul Potter's speech (www.sdsrebels.com): @

* "Paul Potter, 'The Incredible War' (17 April 1965)": @ (Jeffery P. Drury, Central Michigan University)
* www.sds-1960s.org: @ 

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Wednesday, April 7, 1965: 'Peace Without Conquest' speech

On the evening of April 7, 1965, Lyndon Johnson spoke before a television audience at Johns Hopkins University to offer his rationale for recently ramped up American military presence in Vietnam and to tell the world of U.S. intentions to come to the aid of the people of Southeast Asia in a bold new way. ... The president suggested the whole area be developed and modernized as an alternative to continued war. The speech was designed to encourage those in Hanoi to agree to stop warring and to take part in the development of the region, and also to put a good face on the new American measures implemented since February, including sustained aerial bombardment and combat troops.

     -- From "Inventing Vietnam: The United States and State Building, 1954-1968" (James M. Carter, 2008): @ 

* Video (LBJ Library): @

* Transcript (LBJ Library): @

* "Independent South Viet Must Follow Any Peace Discussion, Says Johnson" (United Press International): @

* National Security Action Memorandum No. 328 (April 6): @ (U.S. State Department) and @ (LBJ Library) 

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Wednesday-Thursday, March 24-25, 1965: Teach-in, University of Michigan

The first teach-in was almost an afterthought. The original plan, formulated by thirteen Michigan professors opposed to United States policy in Vietnam, was to cancel classes on March 24 as a protest measure. Their idea was roundly denounced by the University administration, Governor George Romney, and the state senate, which expressed its displeasure in a resolution. As the date of the scheduled "work moratorium" approached, moderates on the faculty proposed a compromise and the teach-in was born. Some 200 members of the Michigan faculty supported it, and 2,000 students attended night-long rallies in four campus auditoriums. Encouraged by the response, Michigan professors called colleagues at other institutions, and the movement was under way.

     -- From "Revolt of the Professors" (Erwin Knoll, The Saturday Review, June 19, 1965): @

     -- Photo from "Teach Your Children Well: 50th Anniversary of U-M Teach-In" (Alumni Association of the University of Michigan): @

* Summary ("Encyclopedia of the Sixties," 2012): @

* Summary ("The Spirit of the Sixties: The Making of Postwar Radicalism," James J. Farrell, 1997): @
* Summary (Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan): @

* Summary (The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto): @
* "Origins of the Teach-In" (College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, University of Michigan): @
* "40 Years Ago, the First Teach-In" (Rabbi Arthur Waskow, The Shalom Center, March 2005): @
* "Reflections on Protest" (Kenneth E. Boulding, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, October 1965): @

* "Students in a Ferment Chew Out the Nation" (Life magazine, April 30, 1965): @ 

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March 1965: Vietnam

Tuesday, March 2: Rolling Thunder

     Operation Rolling Thunder was a 44-month-long aerial bombardment campaign carried out against North Vietnam by the U.S. Air Force and Navy and the South Vietnamese air force. The operation was initiated by President Johnson on 2 March 1965 as a continuation of Operation Flaming Dart. The principal aims, the relative significance of which shifted over time, were to improve the morale of the South Vietnamese, persuade North Vietnam to end its aid to the Viet Cong, destroy North Vietnam's industry and transportation, and cut off the flow of men and supplies from North to South.

     -- From "Historical Dictionary of U.S. Diplomacy during the Cold War" (Martin Folly, 2014): @

* The Air War in North Vietnam: Rolling Thunder Begins, February-June 1965" (The Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, 1971): @

* "The Air War Against North Vietnam" (U.S. Air Force, 1984): @

* "Rolling Thunder 1965: Anatomy of a Failure" (Col Dennis M. Drew, Air University, 1986): @

* "An Uncommon War: The U.S. Air Force in Southeast Asia" (Bernard C. Nalty, Air Force Historical Studies Office, 2015): @

Monday, March 8: Combat troops

     DA NANG, South Viet Nam, Monday -- Two combat-trained battalions of U.S. Marines began moving ashore today to defend vital U.S. jet air bases at this strategic seaport 80 miles from Communist North Viet Nam. The force of 3,500 Marines began debarking from ships lying off the coast under strict security measures to discourage any Viet Cong interference. They came ashore through pounding surf 10 miles north of Da Nang. ... The landing operation began at 9 a.m. (8 p.m. EST) after a delay of about an hour because of rough seas offshore. The air was hot and humid. ... The Marines are the first American ground troops to be ordered into potential direct combat positions against Viet Cong guerrillas and troops infiltrating from North Viet Nam.

     -- From United Press International: @

     -- Photo from "U.S. Marines in Vietnam: The Landing and the Buildup" (History and Museums Division, U.S. Marine Corps, 1978): @

* "Marines Land in Vietnam" (The Age; Melbourne, Australia): @
* "American Troops Enter the Ground War, March-July 1965" (The Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, 1971): @

* "The Third Division in Vietnam" (Third Marine Division Association): @
* "50 Years Ago: Boots on the Ground in Vietnam" (The Saturday Evening Post, 2015): @

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