Vietnam War remained in the field for four days. Tellingly, South Vietnamese forces were again defeated in June 1965 at the Battle of Đồng Xoài. On 8 March 1965, 3,500 U.S. Marines were unilaterally dispatched to South Vietnam. This marked the beginning of the American ground war. U.S. public opinion overwhelmingly supported the deployment. The Marines' initial assignment was defensive. The first deployment of 3,500 in March 1965 was increased to nearly 200,000 by December. The U.S. military had long been schooled in offensive warfare. Regardless of political policies, U.S. commanders were institutionally and psychologically unsuited to a defensive mission. General William
Australian Army Training Team Vietnam later. Serong would later be seconded, and in one capacity or another would remain in Vietnam until the fall of Saigon in 1975, serving as a senior advisor to both the US and South Vietnamese governments. On arrival, the unit joined a large group of US advisors and were dispersed across South Vietnam in small groups. Three groups were dispatched to South Vietnam's northern provinces, training members of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) at the National Training Centre at Dong Da and South Vietnamese Regional Forces (RF) at Hiep Khanh, while a fourth was based at the