We had no national interest in Vietnam. When the US involvement in Vietnam began, Britain was busy fighting our own anti-communist wars in Malaya and then Borneo. In both cases we were supported by the Commonwealth, but not by the USA. So we owed the US nothing.
Believe it or not, British troops actually fought in the Vietnam War. However, they only had a small number of soldiers participate due to their government's decision that committing too many resources would be ill-advised.
The British began to withdraw in December 1945, but this was not completed until June of the following year. The last British soldiers were killed in Vietnam in June 1946. Altogether 40 British and Indian troops were killed and over a hundred were wounded. Vietnamese casualties were 600.
2 Britain supported the American war effort mainly by providing arms and intelligence, sending experts and advisers, training American soldiers to jungle warfare in Malaysia and building air bases in Thailand. The successive British governments resisted American demands to officially commit military troops.
Britain's major interest was not only to support its key ally; it also feared that the “fall” of South Vietnam “would be disastrous to British interests and investments in South East Asia and seriously damaging to the prospects of the Free World containing the Communist threat”.
British SAS involvement in Vietnam began during the Malayan Emergency when they were deployed by parachute into jungle areas to train and lead anti-communist guerrillas against insurgents.
From 1962 to 1973, more than 60,000 Australians served in the Vietnam War. They were part of an allied force led by the United States. Australians fought alongside South Vietnamese Government troops against the Vietcong, a communist-led insurgent force supported by the North Vietnamese Army.
Overview. From the time of the arrival of the first members of the Team in 1962 over 60,000 Australians, including ground troops and air force and navy personnel, served in Vietnam; 523 died as a result of the war and almost 2,400 were wounded.
In 1954, Ho's forces won a decisive victory at Dien Bien Phu and succeeded in evicting the French once and for all. When the Second Indochina War, or Vietnam War, as it's known in the United States, began soon after, France stayed well away.
Vietnam became a French colony in 1877 with the founding of French Indochina, which included Tonkin, Annam, Cochin China and Cambodia. (Laos was added in 1893.) The French lost control of their colony briefly during World War II when Japanese troops occupied Vietnam.
The pretext for the invasion was Japan's ongoing war with China, which began in 1937. By occupying Vietnam, Tokyo hoped to close off China's southern border and halt its supply of weapons and materials.
Nearly 60,000 British combat troops saw action during the war in Korea, they came from both the regular army and national servicemen. The war saw heavy casualties, 1,100 British soldiers were killed and 37,000 Americans lost their lives.
Japan surrendered in August 1945 and Allied leaders agreed that Britain would occupy the south of Vietnam and China the north. But the Vietminh marched down from the hills to liberate Hanoi before the Chinese arrived. On 2 September 1945 the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was proclaimed, with Ho as President.
The Vietnam Conflict Extract Data File of the Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) Extract Files contains records of 58,220 U.S. military fatal casualties of the Vietnam War.
The Vietnam War was a long, costly, and divisive conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States.
By far and beyond the Australians. In fact, the Americans are only above the South Koreans and South Vietnamese when it comes to ground troops, whereas the Australians were the most feared and the rest of SEATO were somewhere in the middle.
The French lost their Indochinese colonies due to political, military, diplomatic, economic and socio-cultural factors. The fall of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 signalled a loss of French power. General Vo Nguyen Giap and his Viet Minh had triumphed on the eve of the Geneva Conference.
Vietnam was mostly used as a supply base for the Japanese in their conquest of the other parts of Asia during the war. This led to a disaster known as the Vietnam Famine.
Statistics: Total Australian service casualties in the Vietnam War, 1962–72. Note: The total of 500 deaths comprises 426 battle casualties and 74 non-battle casualties.
As the war progressed Australians were less convinced by the original rationale that China and communism posed a direct threat. Opposition to the war also grew as national servicemen were killed and wounded in the course of their service.
More than 3000 New Zealand military and civilian personnel served in Vietnam between 1963 and 1975. In contrast to the world wars, New Zealand's contribution was modest. At its peak in 1968, New Zealand's military force numbered only 548. Thirty-seven men died while on active service and 187 were wounded.
And the German learned to fear Australians, because they were reckless, ruthless - and revengeful. During the Third Battle of Ypres, autumn 1917, the ANZAC's (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) met the Germans on high ground, in front of Polygon Wood.
During the Vietnam conflict the standard helmet issued to both American and Australian troops was the Second World War vintage United States pattern M1 helmet, with minor modifications.
According to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia and Vietnam are 'strong partners with shared strategic interests in maintaining peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region based on international law'.