Reply #15: We had ground troops in Vietnam years before they were officially there. [View All]

[Divernan]

I knew Navy ROTC/Marine option students in college in the late 50's and they said a battalion of Marines "officially" based in one of the SEATO member countries, was actually in Vietnam.
Here's a partial timeline of what was truly a slippery (from all the blood spilled) slope:

10 Aug 50 - First shipload of U.S. arms aid to pro-French Vietnam arrives; 1951 - U.S. military aid amounted to more than $500 million by 1951

12 Feb 55 - President Eisenhower's administration sends the first U.S. "advisers" to South Vietnam to train the South Vietnamese Army

5 Sep 56 - President Eisenhower tells a news conference that the French are "involved in a hopelessly losing war in Indochina"

8 July 59 - Two Americans are killed and one wounded during a Viet Minh attack 20 miles north of Saigon

13 May 61 - President Kennedy orders 100 "special forces" troops to S. Vietnam

11 Dec 61 - U.S. aircraft carrier "Core" arrives in Saigon with 33 helicopters and 400 air and ground crewmen assigned to operate them "for" S. Vietnam

22 Dec 61 - SP4 James Davis of Livingston, Tennessee killed by Viet Cong (VC) later called by President Johnson "The first American to fall in defense of our freedom in Vietnam"