January 7: Eight U.S. troops and 54 of the enemy are reported killed in an 18-hour battle in the Mekong Delta near Cao Lãnh.

January 8: The Defense Department issues a March draft call of 33,100 for the Army and Marine Corps.

January 14: In his farewell address, President Johnson urges the U.S. to press “the quest for peace” in Vietnam. U.S. forces kill 122 enemy troops while beating back an attack on a supply convoy near Saigon.

January 20: Nixon becomes the 37th president of the United States and vows to “consecrate” himself to the cause of world peace.

January 25: A Gallup poll finds that 62 percent of Americans favor continuing the draft after the Vietnam War ends rather than start an all-volunteer Army.

February 1: In a ceremony in Ban Mê Thuot, South Vietnamese Montagnards give up their struggle for autonomy and pledge allegiance to the regime in Saigon.

February 7: The U.S. Navy calls a cordon operation a success, in effect since January 13 on the Batangan Peninsula 60 miles southeast of Da Nang.

February 11: A captured 22-year-old NVA private says that his battalion is assigned to attack Saigon at the beginning of Tet.

February 18: A U.S. military spokesman says no major fighting happened during the Tet truce but reports that 196 incidents initiated by the enemy occurred, leaving eight American, four South Vietnamese, and 151 enemy troops dead.

February 23: Saigon and 105 other South Vietnamese cities, towns, and military positions are hit by enemy mortar and rocket rounds. One hundred Americans and 1,000 enemy troops are reported killed.

February 27: American sources estimate that in the five days of enemy attacks since February 22, 5,300 enemy troops have been killed. American losses are put at 250-300. The South Vietnamese government says that 200 citizens have been killed and that 12,700 are homeless.

March 1: U.S. troops overrun an NVA outpost south of the DMZ, two miles northwest of Cam Lo, killing 60 enemy soldiers. Marines along the Laotian border find an enemy cache with thousands of rockets and mortar rounds.

March 3: Four rockets land in the heart of Saigon, killing nine civilians. Secretary of State William P. Rogers condemns the attack on civilians in South Vietnam, saying it won’t provoke the U.S. into making political concessions.

March 7: Despite the U.S.’s repeated warnings, mortar and rocket attacks continue on South Vietnamese cities, towns, and military installations.

March 11: According to administration sources, Secretary of Defense Laird considers withdrawing 40,000-50,000 American combat troops from South Vietnam.

March 13: The U.S. charges North Vietnam and VC troops with seeking “to terrorize the civilian population” in South Vietnam. According to allied figures, since January 1, 1961, 32,112 American troops have been killed, 206,182 have been wounded, and 461,256 enemy troops have been killed.

March 26: Reports say South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu is ready to integrate VC members into South Vietnam’s political system as part of a peace settlement.

April 1: Nixon meets with Ky in Washington. Antiwar soldiers at Ft. Jackson sue the U.S. Army to obtain the right to protest under the First Amendment.

April 5: Thousands of antiwar demonstrators march in New York City to demand the withdrawal of the U.S. from Vietnam.

April 10: The VC and NVA step up their spring offensive with 45 mortar and rocket attacks throughout South Vietnam.

April 13: The U.S. Army takes its first formal disciplinary action against a growing number of antiwar underground GI newspapers by ordering the dishonorable discharge of PFC Dennis Davis, the editor of The Last Harass.

April 20: Twenty enemy rockets hit a U.S. Marine helicopter base on Marble Mountain, killing two and wounding forty-six.

April 21: Rep. Richard D. McCarthy (D-N.Y.) accuses the Defense Department of engaging in a form of chemical warfare in Vietnam by using tear gas “to aid in the killing of the enemy” and defoliants “as an anti-food weapon.”

April 24: B-52s drop 3,000 tons of bombs on the Cambodian border area northwest of Saigon.

April 26: A U.S. patrol base, less than a mile from the Cambodian border, is hit by 475 mortars and rockets, and then attacked by enemy troops.

April 30: Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodia’s chief of state, reverses himself and rejects a new U.S. initiative aimed at restoring diplomatic relations between the two countries.

May 1: Sen. George D. Aiken (R-Vt.) urges the Nixon administration to begin an “orderly withdrawal” of U.S. forces from Vietnam.

May 5: Hundreds of Quakers stage an all-day vigil against the Vietnam War outside the White House.

May 13: President Nixon proposes a reorganization of the draft, asking Congress to implement a lottery system.

May 21: After 11 attempts in 11 days, members of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division and South Vietnamese troops drive the NVA/VA from Ap Bia Mountain, later nicknamed “Hamburger Hill,” and pursue them toward Laos.

May 28: According to 101st Airborne Division reports, American troops are said to have abandoned Ap Bia Mountain.

June 4: President Nixon, in a speech at the Air Force Academy, calls the critics of his foreign and military policy the “new isolationists,” and he pledges that the U.S. will not “turn its back on the world.”

June 8: Nixon announces that 25,000 American troops will be withdrawn from Vietnam by August 31.

June 9: The U.S. command discloses that Lt. Sharon A. Lane is the first U.S. Army nurse to be killed by enemy fire. A rocket struck her ward at the 312th Evacuation Hospital in Chu Lai.

June 14: The U.S. command announces that the First and Second Brigades of the 9th Infantry Division and Regimental Landing Team 9 of the 3rd Marine Division will be withdrawn from Vietnam by the end of August.

June 16: A Thai base, 20 miles east of Saigon, is attacked by 500 Vietcong. U.S. warplanes, helicopters, and artillery come to the aid of the base.

June 21: Seven Americans are killed after an enemy assault on a U.S. artillery base and LZ north of Tây Ninh.

June 22: Life magazine publishes “One Week’s Dead,” eleven pages of photographs of the American soldiers killed between May 28 and June 3.

July 3: Hanoi radio says North Vietnam will release three POWs and permit other prisoners to receive mail on July 4.

July 11: In a national televised speech, Thieu challenges the VC to participate in free elections to be organized by a joint electoral commission and supervised by an international body. In Paris, the provisional revolutionary government denounces Thieu’s election plan as “perfidious trickery.”

July 17: Secretary of State Rogers calls North Vietnam “lacking in humanity” because it refuses to divulge the names of American POWs and denies permission to international teams to inspect its camps.

August 4: Hanoi radio announces that three U.S. POWs have been freed.

August 6: The U.S. Army announces that Col. Robert Rheault, former commanding officer of U.S. Special Forces, and seven other former Green Berets have been charged with premeditated murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the fatal shooting of a Vietnamese man.

August 12: More than 100 cities, towns, and bases in South Vietnam are attacked by enemy rockets and mortars. U.S. headquarters says casualties appear to be light.

August 24: Lt. Eugene Shurtz, Jr., reports to his battalion commander that his company refuses to go out again for a sixth day of heavy fighting on a mountain south of Da Nang.

August 30: Fifteen-hundred new allied reinforcements are moved into the hills south of Danang, where fighting has been going on for 14 days.

September 2: Two recently released American POWs—Robert Frishman and Doug Hegdhal—tell of their brutalization and of the torture of other POWs in Hanoi.

September 4: Hanoi announces that North Vietnamese President Ho Chí Minh, 79, died on September 3. North Vietnam begins a week of official mourning.

September 9: About 250,000 people gather to mourn Ho Chí Minh in Hanoi.

September 12: The White House announces that President Nixon has ordered the resumption of B-52 raids—which had been halted as a new peace initiative—after a 36-hour suspension.

September 29: Because it can’t get CIA cooperation, the U.S. Army drops its case against the six Special Forces troops.

October 15: Hundreds of thousands participate in the Vietnam Moratorium in Washington, D.C., and around the country.

November 3: President Nixon delivers a nationwide address on his Vietnam War policy, asking for support to bring peace to that country and saying he has a plan to bring home all U.S. combat troops on an orderly, but secret, timetable. The following day, Nixon says his speech has produced support from “the great silent majority” of Americans.

November 8: While in Saigon, ex-Alabama Gov. George Wallace says Vietnam War protesters should be jailed for treason.

November 11: The Nixon administration authorizes the use of Pennsylvania Avenue for the antiwar march scheduled for Saturday, November 15.

November 14: The Army charges S.Sgt. David Mitchell with assault with intent to kill thirty Vietnamese civilians in the village of Song My (also known as My Lai) in March 1968.

November 15: An estimated 250,000 people march through Washington, D.C., in an antiwar demonstration.

November 16: In South Vietnam, a group of villagers says that a small American infantry unit killed 567 unarmed civilians during a sweep on March 16, 1968.

November 19: The Senate approves Nixon’s draft lottery and sends it to the White House for the president’s signature. In Saigon, the U.S. Embassy and the military command issue a joint statement saying they do not condone atrocities, including the incident at Song My. The Cleveland Plain Dealer publishes photographs by Ronald Haeberle showing the slaughter of Song My villagers by U.S. soldiers.

November 24: The Army announces that Lt. William Calley will be tried in a general court-martial for the premeditated murders of 109 South Vietnamese civilians. Vietnam veteran Paul Meadlo, in an interview with CBS radio, says he killed 25-40 people in Song My. A captured enemy document is made public claiming that NVA troops “eliminated” 2,900 Vietnamese in Hue during the 1968 Tet Offensive.

November 26: Varnado Simpson tells The New York Times that he killed ten adults in Song My, saying his captain had instructed him to “kill or burn down anything in sight.”

November 28: Pentagon official L. Howard Bennett says a panel looking into racial unrest in the services has found a “pervasive problem throughout the armed forces.”

December 1: The dates are drawn in the first draft lottery held in a generation.

December 30: In Paris, the U.S. delivers a list of 1,406 names of men missing in Southeast Asia as of December 24. The Council of the American Association for the Advancement of Science urges the immediate halt of the use of 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid and 2,4-dichlororphenoxyacetic acid, two highly toxic herbicides widely used in Vietnam, citing reports that they cause birth deformities in mice.

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