FACTS ABOUT THE VIETNAM WAR FROM PAGE B2

• Though President Johnson ordered combat troops into Vietnam in 1965, the conflict between North and South Vietnam began much earlier than that. North Vietnamese fighters began helping South Vietnamese rebels in 1954, marking a start to the conflict.

• American involvement in combat began even before President Johnson sent troops to Vietnam in 1965. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. combat involvement is now recognized to have begun on January 12, 1962, which marks the launch of Operation Chopper. That operation required U.S. Army pilots to airlift more than 1,000 South Vietnamese soldiers to an area west of Saigon to capture a territory that was being held by communist fighters.

• More than 58,000 American military personnel lost their lives as a result of the Vietnam War.

• Data from the Defense POW/ MIA Accounting Agency indicates that, as of April 2021, 1,584 Americans lost in the Vietnam War remain unaccounted for. The vast majority of unaccounted military personnel were lost in Vietnam, though hundreds were lost while serving in Laos, Cambodia and China.

• The number of U.S. troops in Vietnam peaked in April 1969. By that point, the U.S. government had deployed 543,000 troops to Vietnam.

• The last American ground troops left Vietnam on March 29, 1973. Fighting between the North and South Vietnamese would continue for two more years, but the United Sates would not return to Vietnam.