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The Vietnam War was the longest and most unpopular war in which Americans ever fought. And there is no reckoning the cost. The toll in suffering, sorrow, in rancorous national turmoil can never be tabulated. No one wants ever to see America so divided again. And for many of the more than two million American veterans of the war, the wounds of Vietnam may never heal.*
Fifty-eight thousand Americans lost their lives including three Lakers: David Nash,Edward J Smith, andRobert Asmuth Jr.The losses to the Vietnamese people were appalling. Direct American involvement began in 1955 with the arrival of the first advisors. The first combat troops arrived in 1965 and we fought the war until the cease-fire of January 1973. South Vietnamese leaders believed that America would never let them go down to defeat -- a belief that died as North Vietnamese tanks smashed into Saigon on April 30, 1975, and the long war ended with South Vietnam's surrender.
Clearly, the Vietnam War was more than a military conflict. In America, it changed a generation and continues to color American thinking on many military and foreign policy issues.
Vietnam Causalities
David Nash Edward J Smith Robert Asmuth Jr
Conflicts in which Lakers Served & Sacrificed
World War I World War II Korean War Vietnam War Post-Vietnam
*Synopsis from the award-winning PBS documentary Vietnam: A Television History.
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