Vietnam ground combat operations in 1965, and at their peak they numbered more than 500,000. The US also engaged in a sustained aerial bombing campaign. Meanwhile, China and the Soviet Union provided North Vietnam with significant material aid and 15,000 combat advisers. Communist forces supplying the Việt Cộng carried supplies along the Hồ Chí Minh trail, which passed through the Kingdom of Laos. The communists attacked South Vietnamese targets during the 1968 Tết Offensive. Although the campaign failed militarily, it shocked the American establishment, and turned US public opinion against the war. During the offensive, communist troops massacred over 3,000 civilians
1961 in the Vietnam War implementation of the expanded military aid to South Vietnam. He listed three tenets: (1) We have great authority from the President; (2) Money is no object; and (3) The one restriction is that combat troops will not be introduced. In closing the meeting McNamara said the job of the U.S. military "was to win in South Viet Nam and if we weren't winning to tell him what was needed to win." Cryptologist Corporal James T. Davis became the first American member of the United States Army Security Agency to be killed in Vietnam. He and 8 South Vietnamese soldiers were