In early 1965, after southern Communist forces attacked a U.S. Army airfield in South Vietnam, the Johnson administration launched Operation Rolling Thunder, a sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam. The first American ground troops hit the ground soon after the bombing began. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. combat troops would eventually follow.
Vietnamese officials only learned of plans to introduce American ground troops as 3,500 Marines were wading onto its shores. Bui Diem, the future South Vietnamese Ambassador to the United States, described the rift between the American and Vietnamese experience: “For the United States this event signaled the start of a new American land war in Asia. For the South Vietnamese it meant the presence once again of foreign soldiers on our own territory.”
The original caption for this photograph reads: Beach activity at Da Nang, Viet Nam, during the landing of the Marines of the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade.
