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
1963 in the Vietnam War 25 percent more than the total killed in the previous year. North Vietnam had infiltrated about 40,000 cadres and fighters into South Vietnam over a period of several years. They made up about 50 percent of the Viet Cong army and 80 percent of political operatives and technical personnel. They consisted mostly of southerners who had migrated north in 1954–1955 to reside in a communist state rather than remain in South Vietnam. Units of the North Vietnamese army had not yet been dispatched to South Vietnam. 1963 in the Vietnam War The defeat of the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) in