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
1965 in the Vietnam War The siege led up to the Battle of Ia Drang. A CIA intelligence estimate said that "Hanoi continues to asset its determination to press on with the war in South Vietnam despite the continuing attrition of the air war and the increase of US troops in the South." To protest the Vietnam War, a Quaker named Norman Morrison doused himself in kerosene and set himself on fire in front of The Pentagon. Morrison died. In a memorandum to President Johnson, Secretary McNamara estimated total communist forces in South Vietnam as having increased to 230,000, including 71,000 Viet Cong main force,