Dale R. Buis and Master Sgt. Chester M. Ovnand become the first Americans killed in the American phase of the Vietnam War when guerrillas strike a Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) compound in Bien Hoa, 20 miles northeast of Saigon.
The names of U.S. Army Master Sgt. Chester Ovnand and Maj. Dale Buis are inscribed on Panel 1 E of the Vietnam War Memorial Wall. They were the first two U.S. service members killed in the Vietnam War.
997 soldiers were killed on their first day in Vietnam .. 1,448 soldiers were killed on their last day in Vietnam.
Dan Bullock (December 21, 1953 – June 7, 1969) was a United States Marine and the youngest U.S. serviceman killed in action during the Vietnam War, dying at the age of 15. Goldsboro, North Carolina, U.S. Elmwood Cemetery, Goldsboro, Wayne County, North Carolina, U.S.
Though other soldiers died after the cease-fire prior to the American withdrawal in 1975, Bill Nolde is considered to be the last American combat casualty of the war in Vietnam. On Feb. 3, 1973, a funeral was held at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Mount Pleasant with 600 fellow townspeople in attendance.
Errol Noack was the first Australian conscript to die in the Vietnam War.
Roy P. Benavidez, United States Army, who distinguished himself by a series of daring and extremely valorous actions on 2 May 1968 while assigned to Detachment B-56, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), 1st Special Forces, Republic of Vietnam.
As the longest held prisoner during the Vietnam era, Colonel Thompson demonstrated truly magnificent powers of faith, physical endurance, and trust in the Nation during years of almost unfathomable deprivation and hardship.
Joseph Ernest Atkins (1947 – January 23, 1999) was an American serial killer and Vietnam War veteran who murdered three people in South Carolina. He murdered his half-brother in 1969 and received a life sentence. After Atkins' adoptive father pleaded with officials for his release, he was released on parole in 1980.
Phan Thị Kim Phúc OOnt (Vietnamese pronunciation: [faːŋ tʰɪ̂ˀ kim fúk͡p̚]; born April 6, 1963), referred to informally as the girl in the picture and the Napalm girl, is a South Vietnamese-born Canadian woman best known as the nine-year-old child depicted in the Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph, titled "The Terror of ...
From the time of the arrival of the first members of the Team in 1962 over 60,000 Australians, including ground troops and air force and navy personnel, served in Vietnam; 523 died as a result of the war and almost 2,400 were wounded.
The Mỹ Lai massacre (/ˌmiːˈlaɪ/; Vietnamese: Thảm sát Mỹ Lai [tʰâːm ʂǎːt mǐˀ lāːj] ( listen)) was a war crime committed by United States Army personnel on 16 March 1968, involving the mass murder of unarmed civilians in Sơn Tịnh district, South Vietnam, during the Vietnam War.
In the first two weeks of 1968, PAVN/VC forces shelled 49 district and provincial capitals in South Vietnam and temporarily occupied two of them. General Westmoreland described the fighting to Time magazine "as the most intense of the entire war." MACV claimed that 5,000 PAVN/VC had been killed.
Nearly a dozen general officers and one admiral were killed while supporting military operations in Vietnam. They include Maj. Gen. George William Casey Sr., whose helicopter went missing over Vietnam on July 7, 1970.
My Lai Massacre, also called Pinkville Massacre, mass killing of as many as 500 unarmed villagers by U.S. soldiers in the hamlet of My Lai on March 16, 1968, during the Vietnam War.
Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam's independence from France on September 2, 1945, just hours after Japan's surrender in World War II. When the French rejected his plan, the Viet Minh resorted to guerilla warfare to fight for an independent Vietnam.
Charles Benjamin "Chuck" Mawhinney (born 1949) is a former United States Marine who holds the Corps' record for the most confirmed sniper kills, having recorded 103 confirmed kills and 216 probable kills in 16 months during the Vietnam War. Lakeview, Oregon, U.S.
Hundreds of American POW's, mostly airmen, endured months of isolation and squalid conditions at Hỏa Lò. POWs were repeatedly interrogated and tortured at the hands of their captors and endured enormous levels of physical and mental abuse.
Few Vietnam-era Marines are more storied than legendary sniper Carlos Hathcock. He didn't just his success by confirmed kills or the longest shots taken (though he held both records in his lifetime).
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency lists 684 POWs returned home alive from the Vietnam War — the majority after the U.S. pulled out of the war in 1973. (The war officially ended April 30, 1975). There are 1,582 Americans still unaccounted for, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
As a branch of the US forces, however, the Marine Corps lost the highest percentage of its own men (5.0%) which in turn accounted for 25.5% of all casualties.
Of the nearly 1,600 Americans still unaccounted-for from the Vietnam War, hundreds are believed to be in a “non-recoverable” category, meaning after rigorous investigation DPAA has determined that the individual perished but does not believe it is possible to recover the remains.
Sandy McGregor, who was the Commander for 3 Field Troop, the first Tunnel Rat troop of the war, said it was a very dangerous and deadly job. "I can tell you that the engineer corp lost more people, killed and wounded, than any other corp in Vietnam — proportionate to the number of people who were over there," he said.
7. Hue was the single bloodiest battle of the Vietnam War. According to Bowden's research, the Americans believed Hue was held by a handful of die-hard communist troops and sent small units of U.S. Marines to clear them out.