Dedicated on Dec. 7, 1967, this was the first memorial in the United States to recognize soldiers of the Vietnam War, and those attending its dedication stood in freezing rain to pay tribute to those serving in the conflict. Today it honors those who fought and served, and it was renovated and expanded in 2017 for its 50th anniversary. The Vietnam War was a long, costly armed conflict between North Vietnam and its southern allies, known as the Viet Cong, and South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The war began in 1954, though regional conflict stretched back to the mid-1940s, after the rise of Ho Chi Minh and his communist Viet Minh party in North Vietnam, and continued amid the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Major events included Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident in 1964, U.S. air raids in 1966-1968 and 1972, the Tet Offensive in 1968, the invasion of Laos in 1971, and the fall of Saigon in 1975. More than three million people, including more than 50,000 Americans, were killed, and more than half were Vietnamese civilians. By 1969, at the peak of U.S. involvement, more than 500,000 U.S. military personnel were involved in the conflict. Growing opposition in the United States divided Americans before and after President Richard Nixon ordered the withdrawal of U.S. personnel in 1973. In 1975, communist forces seized control of Saigon, ending the war, and the country was unified as a Socialist Republic of Vietnam the following year. Two Wentzville residents who died in the war were Robert William Smith, a Private First Class who died of mortar shrapnel wounds in Tây Ninh two days after arriving in Vietnam and was buried in Eternal Peace Cemetery in Wentzville, and Dale Ray Ross, a Petty Officer Second Class who was killed aboard the USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin when an accidentally fired five-inch Zuni rocket struck an armed Douglas A-4 Skyhawk and killed 135 crewmen; he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C.
