Vietnam War
From 1954 to 1975, America fought its longest and costliest war. The Vietnam War created massive disruption to Southeast Asia and massive turmoil in American society.
The Human Cost of War
The major product of war is the number of casualties: the killed, wounded, or missing in action (MIA). Although the numbers are tainted by exaggeration or error, the estimated total of military casualties from 1954 to 1975 was 1.75 million killed and at least 3 million wounded. By the end of the war, there were 10,173 captured and missing in action. Total civilian casualties for Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia numbered well over 500,000. In addition, after the war thousands of Vietnamese died trying to flee Communist rule, and nearly 2 million Cambodians were killed by the Communist Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot (c. 1925–1998).
American forces suffered 47,382 killed in action, 10,811 noncombatant deaths, 153,303 wounded in action (some 74,000 survived as amputees), and about 3,000 MIAs. (In April 1995 the U.S. Department of Defense listed 1,621 Americans missing in Vietnam and 2,207 for all of Southeast Asia.)
The greatest causes of deaths in the U.S. Army were small-arms fire (51 percent) and artillery shells, mortar, and grenade fragments (35 percent).
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