In the Vietnam War, a Vietnamese mother ran through a hail of bullets, holding her mortally wounded child in both hands as she skirted the raging battlefield. The mother panicked and staggered across the battlefield. Her eyes were unusually wide with fear and anxiety, and she wailed with grief. As the U.S. military became fully involved in the Vietnam War in 1965, the number of civilian casualties increased dramatically.
Since 1963, the Viet Cong (VC) turned Cape Ba Làng An into a fortified stronghold; on August 24, 1965, the U.S. Marine Corps intelligence headquarters assumed that the Viet Cong had withdrawn from their fortifications from the Ba Làng An Peninsula. The U.S. Marines, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, and the Vietnamese Marines conducted Operation Piranha on the peninsula from September 7-10, 1965. During this operation, the US forces killed approximately 178 Viet Cong (VC) and captured approximately 360 VC and suspected Vietnamese. Coalition casualties included about two U.S. Marines and about five South Vietnamese soldiers killed. Due to indiscriminate shelling zones, the number missing may have been civilian Vietnamese.
In an effort to stop communism in Vietnam, the U.S. military intervened in earnest in 1965 to assist South Vietnam. In response to the Gulf of Tonkin incident, under special authority, the U.S. began bombing North Vietnam on March 2. On April 21, the U.S. announced an increase in the number of U.S. troops to about 60,000. On August 31, the Johnson administration signed a law making it illegal to burn draft cards, resulting in five years in prison and a $1,000 fine. By the end of September, the number of U.S. troops stationed in Vietnam exceeded about 130,000, with 35,000 new troops being drafted each month. in early 1969, the number of U.S. troops had swelled to about 544,000.
