Today in History: Vietnam Memorial Dedicated
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Today in History: Vietnam Memorial Dedicated
The ground war in Vietnam officially started 8 March, 1965 when 3500 Marines were deployed to South Vietnam, and rising to almost 200,000 by December. The war went on until 1973 when the last troops returned home. These Men and Women who served in Vietnam were shunned for many years, and even today Americans are finally giving these hero’s the welcome home they deserve. The first step in this change of the wars image came in 1982 with the dedication of the know iconic Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. From History:
Near the end of a weeklong national salute to Americans who served in the Vietnam War, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is dedicated in Washington after a march to its site by thousands of veterans of the conflict. The long-awaited memorial was a simple V-shaped black-granite wall inscribed with the names of the 57,939 Americans who died in the conflict, arranged in order of death, not rank, as was common in other memorials.
The designer of the memorial was Maya Lin, a Yale University architecture student who entered a nationwide competition to create a design for the monument. Lin, born in Ohio in 1959, was the daughter of Chinese immigrants. Many veterans’ groups were opposed to Lin’s winning design, which lacked a standard memorial’s heroic statues and stirring words. However, a remarkable shift in public opinion occurred in the months after the memorial’s dedication. Veterans and families of the dead walked the black reflective wall, seeking the names of their loved ones killed in the conflict. Once the name was located, visitors often made an etching or left a private offering, from notes and flowers to dog tags and cans of beer.
See more at History.com.
To those who served we say Thank You. Without your sacrifice we would not have had the chance to be part of the greatest Military in the world.
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The Vietnam War officially started in 1954 after Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh party rose to power in North Vietnam. The war ended in 1975 when communist forces invaded Saigon, ending in the unification of the country as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1976.
Dewayne, thank you for the dates you have provided. The referenced dates in the article refer only to the official ground war, though we did have small numbers in the area starting in 1954. Again, thank you for the additional information as it is actually difficult to pin some of the dates down for the war as a whole.