Vietnam

The United States Marine Corps entered Vietnam in 1965 with two battalions and no idea that this war was to become the longest in Corps’ history. Marines and their Allies fought both Viet Cong guerillas and North Vietnamese Army forces in hamlets, urban areas, jungles and rice paddies. This gallery brings to life horrific scenes of close combat and small moments of compassion on the field of battle at such places as Howard’s Hill, Marble Mountain, Quang Nam, Khe Sanh, and Dong Ha. Wall murals and dioramas deliver stories about combat operations, significant contributions to the war, individual Marines, special units, morale, and air support.

 Visitors are taken into battle through a series of immersive exhibits and are introduced to the weapons and equipment used by the combatants, from the simple sharpened bamboo stake to the highly sophisticated ONTOS anti-tank vehicle. An A-4 Skyhawk and the ever present UH-1 Huey helicopter represent the air war. Marines move block by block, house by house wresting control of Hue City from enemy forces while also caring for innocent civilians caught up in the battle. Visitors are airlifted into the “hot” landing zone at Hill 881 South near Khe Sanh on a CH-46 helicopter. Rotor wash swirls the hot air and the sounds of combat surround visitors as they step off the helicopter’s rear deck. Making his way to the CH-46 is a wounded Marine while another lies dead in this austere and dangerous scene.

In the Air, on Land and Sea: 1954 - 1975  (Part 1)

• Cold War Crises
• Setting the Stage
• Initial Fighting
• Marine Aviation
  
• Recon Marine

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"Aggressive conduct, if allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war."
President John F. Kennedy, October 1952

In the aftermath of World War II, totalitarian Communist states expanded their influence across Asia and Eastern Europe.  U.S. leaders decided that drawing the line in Thailand and Vietnam limited the danger of a direct and escalated conflict with Russian interests.  President John F. Kennedy endorsed the "Domino Theory" enunciated in 1954 by President Dwight Eisenhower.  Failure to hold the line in South Vietnam, Kennedy felt, would endanger Laos, Cambodia, Burma, the Philippines-perhaps even New Zealand and Australia.  Kennedy saw no challenge "more deserving of our every effort" than resisting the loss of America's security "piece by piece, country by country."

Marines deployed around the world during the Cold War, serving as ready-reaction forces as each new crisis erupted.  A battalion evacuated civilians from Egypt during the 1956 Suez Canal emergency.  An expeditionary brigade operated in Thailand in 1962 to deter expansion of the Communist insurgency in Laos.  Eight thousand Marines quelled disorder in the Dominican Republic in 1965.

During the Cold War's most dangerous episode, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the Corps assembled 40,000 Marines prepared to invade Cuba.  Planners projected the loss of 8,000 of them in an invasion that fortunately never took place.

​"We are not going to send American boys ten thousand miles to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves."
          President Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964

​American involvement in Vietnam escalated after the French colonial regime crumbled in 1954.  President Eisenhower considered, but rejected, a plan to send a Marine division to bolster the besieged French force that surrendered at Dien Bien Phu.  Marines later assisted in the evacuation of 800,000 refugees fleeing from the Communist north after the partition of Vietnam at the end of the French Indochina War.
 
Viet Minh revolutionaries who attacked the new Republic of South Vietnam seemed to Americans less like nationalists than pawns of international Communism.  Their Soviet advisors, Soviet-made weapons, and applause from Moscow prompted Eisenhower and then President Kennedy to send help to South Vietnam.  First came advisors, then signals-intelligence units and helicopter squadrons.  By early 1965, newly elected President Johnson felt obligated to abandon his campaign promise about "Asian boys" and order combat Marines ashore.

​A generation of Marines victorious on Pacific islands and Korean ridges faced different circumstances as leaders in Vietnam.  They adapted to war against Viet Cong (VC) guerrillas-lightly armed, highly mobile, secretive soldiers in black "pajamas."  In March 1965, President Johnson used the powers granted by the Tonkin Resolution to land Marines near Da Nang.  The long era of military advice and assistance gave way to active combat.
 
The 7th Marines decisively won a fierce battle in August against a VC regiment.  Their guerrilla foes refused to give open battle thereafter, switching to classic patterns of stealth and deception, attack and withdrawal.  "The greatest danger in dealing with guerrillas was oversimplification," a Marine officer noted.  "The second danger was impatience."  By the end of 1966 MajGen Lew Walt had 67,000 Marines on hand to face an intensifying conflict.

"No one out-flew the United States Marines."
          Major General Keith B. McCutcheon

​The 1st Marine Aircraft Wing deployed early to Vietnam with a massive force of helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, and stayed to the end.  Wing commander MajGen Keith B. McCutcheon, who had refined close air support in the Pacific War and pioneered helicopter use in Korea, ensured immediate assistance to ground Marines under attack, even under dangerous flying conditions.
 
Marine fliers disagreed strongly with Air Force attempts to take control of Marine planes.  In support of their comrades on the ground, they repeatedly demonstrated the unique and dramatic advantages of the integrated air-ground team that always has been a Marine trademark.

"Stealth is still primary, but, more and more, Recon is getting involved in shooting matches. Howitzers help."
          Major D.A. Colby, 1966

​"Recon" Marines, intensely trained but lightly armed, took the war deep into enemy strongholds.  The intelligence they uncovered provided guidance to the infantry battalions, and directed artillery and air power onto inviting targets.  Helicopters lifted Recon teams into isolated zones, and sometimes extracted them under desperate conditions.  Early war tactical doctrine required clandestine patrols to watch the enemy without fighting them.  As the war progressed, division commanders authorized Recon patrols to intercept and engage enemy troops wherever found.  Increased enemy counter-patrol activity led to violent firefights in remote terrain.

In the Air, on Land and Sea: 1954 - 1975  (Part 2)

• Southern I Corp
• Tet and Hue City
  
• War Along the DMZ
  
• The Home Front
• High Mobility Operations

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In 1965, Marines assumed defense of I Corps Tactical Zone (soon called "Eye Corps"), which encompassed the five northernmost provinces of South Vietnam.  The zone was not wide, stretching between Laos and the South China Sea, but ran more than 250 miles north to south and included 2.6 million civilians.
 
Marines in the three southern provinces of the zone - Quang Nam, Quang Tin, and Quang Ngai - fought mainly a hit-and-run guerrilla war that was far different than the more conventional conflict waged by their comrades farther north, near the Demilitarized Zone that separated North Vietnam from the Republic of Vietnam. Weather and terrain combined to make southern I Corps a difficult place to fight guerrillas.  Annual rainfall of more than 125 inches (Washington, D.C., averages 39) turned the region's red clay into sticky glue that complicated troop movements and resupply.

"What the hell is going on? I thought we were winning the war."
          Walter Cronkite, CBS News

A massive Communist offensive erupted across Vietnam on 30 January 1968, shattering a cease-fire announced for Tet, the national holiday.  In a masterpiece of surprise, the enemy struck every Allied stronghold in the country.  The Allies fought back desperately, including the Marine embassy guards in Saigon.
 
Most Tet attackers were quickly killed or repulsed, but the battle for the ancient imperial capital of Hue raged for 25 bloody days, flattening much of the city, including its majestic cathedral.  When ARVN troops finally overran the last NVA diehards, they found shallow graves in the city containing 3,000 civilian corpses.  Communist death squads had methodically murdered anyone with an education or other "counter-revolutionary" taint.  Hue, the biggest set-piece Marine battle of the war, cost 1,200 Marine casualties. Traumatized by Tet, President Johnson chose not to run for re-election that November.

"There were 162 North Vietnamese Army cannons [in the DMZ], and I wasn't permitted to do a thing."
          MajGen Raymond G. Davis, 1968

The Geneva Convention of 1954 divided Vietnam in half and established a broad Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) along the new border.  Ignoring the agreement, the North Vietnamese used the DMZ as a springboard for infiltrating NVA forces into South Vietnam.  Marine strength steadily shifted northward to face heavily armed NVA divisions instead of guerrilla bands.  By 1967 the war near the DMZ, primarily fought by the 3rd Marine Division, exceeded in violence and firepower the sum of most pitched battles elsewhere in Vietnam.  Long-range artillery fire from unassailable havens in Laos and the DMZ supported NVA attacks, but Marines were not allowed to take action across the borders.
 
Many Marines saw more days of combat in a one-year tour near the DMZ than the overall total their predecessors had experienced in the intense but relatively infrequent Pacific island battles during the 1940s.

"What most Americans seem to insist on is an honorable solution."
          Newsweek, 1 January 1968

​As 1968 began, a national magazine contemplated "the cruel dilemma which the Vietnamese war poses for Americans who cherish both peace and their country's well-being."  The Dow Jones index opened the year at 880, American households' net worth averaged $3,256.10, and a voracious Mrs. Robinson cornered Dustin Hoffman on theater screens in "The Graduate."  Americans mourned the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King.  Anti-war demonstrations rocked much of the country.  Richard Nixon defeated Hubert Humphrey in the Presidential election, the Detroit Tigers won the World Series, and on Christmas Eve the Apollo 8 astronauts orbited the moon.

"High-mobility mountain warfare-very complex, very fast-moving operations… the kind of war I wanted to fight."
          MajGen Raymond G. Davis

​Marines freed from defending static positions such as Khe Sanh fanned out across I Corps in 1969 with long-range operations into remote enemy strongholds.  The Marines welcomed the resumption of the offensive, and their helicopter-supported forays disrupted NVA operations and logistic stockpiles.
 
Policy makers then and historians ever since have debated which US strategy should have prevailed in the war - the large scale, search-and-destroy operations against invading NVA forces, or the smaller scale counter-insurgency operations among the coastal population.  The conflict was a toxic mix of a local guerrilla war against the Viet Cong, complicated by a conventional war against well-armed NVA divisions infiltrating across the border.  In the end, the NVA military threat drained too many resources from the painstaking security work among the people.