May 7, 1954 For more than 30 years prior to the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu on May 7, 1954, the people of Southeast Asia had struggled for independence from France. At the time of the French defeat, representatives of the major powers and of the Indochinese people met at Geneva, Switzerland and divided Indochina into North Vietnam and South Vietnam, creating Laos and Cambodia at the same time.

South Vietnam became a republic while North Vietnam, under Ho Chi Minh, became a Communist nation. Concurrently, the U.S. sponsored the creation of an eight-nation Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) to protect Cambodia, Laos, and South Vietnam from the spread of Communism. North Vietnam soon declared its intention to reunite with South Vietnam, by military means if necessary, and to begin supporting a terrorist campaign within South Vietnam operated by local Communist Viet Cong guerrillas. Later, North Vietnam also began supporting Communist Pathet Lao guerrillas in Laos.

To meet the growing threat inside South Vietnam, the U.S. began to expand its military assistance, a program which originally began in 1950 when the French requested help from the U.S. to fight the Indochinese insurgents, many of whom were not communists. What started as a small U.S. assistance program to train the South Vietnamese to protect themselves grew into a massive military and naval effort by the U.S. with four major areas of combat operations. These were South Vietnam, North Vietnam, the northern portion of Laos (The Plain of Jars), and southern Laos (The Panhandle). A fifth area of action, Cambodia, developed later.