On this day in 1945,

First American Soldier Killed in Vietnam

On this day in 1945, Lt. Col. Peter Dewey, became the first American soldier killed in Vietnam.  Dewey was a U.S. Army officer with the Office of Strategic Services and was the head of a seven-man team sent to Vietnam to search for missing American pilots and to gather information on the situation in the country after the surrender of the Japanese.

Two decades later Democrat President John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson would send up to 500,000 American troops to fight in Vietnam. By the time the Vietnam War was over, 58,000 young American boys, most of whom had been drafted and forced to go to Vietnam to fight, had been killed.