S. S. Fehr's Letters to Mom

1965:

• January 1965 - LBJ announces plans for his Great Society programs in his State of the Union address, and HUD, the Housing and Urban Development Department, is created.
• February 1965 - The Rev. Martin Luther King. Jr. (MLK) and 770 others are arrested in Selma, Alabama, for picketing the county courthouse to protest harassment and intimidation of blacks who attempt to vote. One county near Selma is 80 percent black but not a single black is registered to vote.
• 21 February 1965 - Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little, is assassinated by three black Muslim rivals.
• 7 March 1965 - Bloody Sunday. About 600 blacks attempt a silent march in a column of twos across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, to petition the governor and dramatize the lack of voting rights. White police and posse beat and teargas the marchers. A week later, LBJ goes on national television in a joint session of the Congress condemning the violence and introduces a Voting Rights bill.
• 17 March 1965 - MLK wins a federal court order to march from Selma to Montgomery. Alabama Governor George Wallace refuses state protection for the marchers, but LBJ federalizes the Alabama National Guard and calls up part of the United States Army.
• 21-24 March 1965 - Thousands march the 50 miles of Highway 80 to Montgomery protected by the army and National Guard.
• August 1965 - Miniskirts become fashionable.
• 6 August 1965 - LBJ signs the Voting Rights Act authorizing Federal employees to register qualified voters and suspend obstacles such as literacy tests whose purpose is to keep African Americans from voting.
• 11- 16 August 1965 - In Los Angeles, blacks riot, loot and burn over 200 businesses seemingly without clear motive which claim 34 lives and injure over 900 people. More subtle economic class distinctions, despite available voting rights in areas outside the South, contribute to economic inequalities. AG2 Fehr arrives in California on 10 August and watches the violence on TV in disbelief and disappointment. More Watts style riots break out in other northern cities; between 1965 and 1968, more than a hundred riots occur.
• June 1965 - Bob Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone single is released.
• 11 June 1965 - The Queen of England awards the Beatles their MBEs (Members of the Order of the British Empire).
• 26 August 1965 - The last day one could improve his draft status by getting married.
• August 1965 - LBJ signs law amending the Selective Service Act to make draft card burning a Federal offense.
• 16 October 1965 - Vietnam War protests, teach-ins and marches occur in 80 cities and internationally in Tokyo, London and Rome.
• October 1965 - Allen Ginsberg speaks of "flower power" to the anti-war rallies.
• October 1965 - Hare Krishna's emerge chanting, if not enchantingly.
• October 1965 - The LA Dodgers defeat the Minnesota Twins in seven games to win the World Series. Sandy Koufax finishes 2-1 with a 0.38 ERA, strikes out 29 in 24 innings and earns MVP honors.
• 1 November 1965 - J. Edgar Hoover says war demonstrators represent a minority for the most part comprised of halfway citizens who are neither morally, mentally nor emotionally mature.
• 2 November 1965 - Norman Morrison, a 32-year old Quaker father of three, burns himself to death below Secretary of Defense McNamara's Pentagon window.
• 9 November 1965 - Roger Allen La Porte, a Catholic worker, self immolates in front of the United Nations building.
• 9 -10 November 1965 - The northeast is bathed in darkness for 12 hours and deprived of TV during a massive power failure culminating in premature bedtimes, apparent mass ejaculating and giving birth to a demographic blip of a baby boomlet nine months later.
• November 1965 - Ralph Nader attacks the auto industry with the publication of Unsafe at Any Speed.
• 27 November 1965 - An estimated 35,000 anti-war protesters circle the White House, and then march to the Washington Monument for a rally.
• December 1965 - The Selective Service System is calling up 40,200 men per month.
• 15 December 1965 - Gemini 6 and 7 rendezvous in space.
• 1965 - GOOOD Morning, Vietnam! U.S. Air Force DJ Adrian Cronauer begins greeting GI's from AFR (Armed Forces Radio) in Saigon.

• 1965 - The Academy Award for Best Picture is conferred upon The Sound of Music, and the Best Actor is Lee Marvin in Cat Ballou.
• 1965 - The Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting is awarded to Louis M. Kohlmeier of the Wall Street Journal for his enterprise in reporting the growth of the fortune of President Lyndon B. Johnson and his family. The Pulitzer for Photography is earned by Horst Faas of the Associated Press for his combat photography of the war in South Vietnam during 1964.

  In Vietnam, the escalation and build up of American troops continues in 1965:

• January 1965 - The U.S. Navy begins river patrols on South Vietnam's inland waterways.
• 27 January 1965 - Aides to President Johnson advise that the passive military role in Vietnam is not succeeding and the U.S. has reached a fork in the road - we must either use our military force or withdraw, i.e., negotiate as a cover for abandonment.
• 28 January to 28 July 1965 - In this fateful period, LBJ initiates bombing North Vietnam and commits U.S. ground troops. Troop strength climbs from 23,000 advisors to 175,000.
• 6 February 1965 - Viet Cong (VC) attack Pleiku 240 miles north of Saigon in the Central Highlands killing eight, wounding 126 Americans and destroying 10 aircraft.
• 7-8 February 1965 - LBJ, hearing of the Pleiku attack, is fed up and orders a retaliatory air strike by Navy jets from the carrier Ranger against a North Vietnamese Army camp near Dong Hoi in northwestern North Vietnam.
• February 1965 - The U.S.S.R. agrees to send Soviet surface to air (SAM) missiles to North Vietnam.
• 19 February 1965 - LBJ decides that regular strikes against the North would begin but does not announce it publicly.
• 22 February 1965 - LBJ approves Gen. Westmoreland's request for two Marine battalions to protect the DaNang air base from 6,000 Viet Cong in the area.
• 2 March 1965 - Operation Rolling Thunder begins the bombing of North Vietnam to shake their will or convince them to reduce their support of the Viet Cong and/or to negotiate. It is also believed that Rolling Thunder will bolster the morale of the South Vietnamese. Over 100 aircraft from air bases in South Vietnam and carriers in the South China Sea strike an ammunition depot in North Vietnam. Scheduled to last eight weeks, Rolling Thunder continues for three years.
• 8 March 1965 - The first combat troops (3,500 Marines) land in China Beach at 0600 hours to protect the DaNang air base. The Marines join 23,000 American advisors already in Vietnam.
• 11 March 1965 - Joint US Navy and South Vietnamese Navy Operation Market Time begins to block and disrupt sea routes and coastal supply lines used by North Vietnam. The North Vietnamese must shift more supplies south along the more difficult Ho Chi Minh trail.
• March 1965 - The VC bomb the US embassy in Saigon.
• 1 April 1965 - LBJ authorizes two more Marine battalions and changes their role from base security to active combat in offensive operations. An additional Marine enclave is established at Phu Bai to guard the Army's 8th RRU (established November 1964) Sigint listening post.
• 7 April 1965 - LBJ, seeking to coax the VC and North Vietnamese into a settlement, offers a billion dollar economic development plan for Southeast Asia, in his Peace Without Conquest speech at Johns Hopkins University. "Old Ho can't turn that down." LBJ tells his aides privately. Ho does.
• 20 April 1965 - LBJ's top aides meet in Honolulu and recommend sending another 40,000 combat soldiers to Vietnam.
• 24 April 1965 - American troops in Vietnam become eligible for combat pay. (Hostile Fire Pay is $65 per month.)
• 3 May 1965 - The 173rd Airborne Brigade arrives, the first US Army combat troops.
• 11 May 1965 - The VC overrun South Vietnamese (ARVN) troops in Phuoc Long Province.
• 13 May 1965 - An unpublicized bombing pause begins to see if Hanoi would respond to overtures to negotiate. Hand-delivered diplomatic messages are rebuffed. Bombing resumes 18 May 1965.
• 13 May 1965 - VC attack the US Special Forces camp in Phuoc Long. Second Lieutenant Charles Williams earns the Congressional Medal of Honor by knocking out a VC machine gun, then guiding rescue helicopters while wounded four times.
• June 1965 - Between June 1965 and August 1966, an aircraft carrier is constantly operating at Dixie Station for US carrier planes to strike enemy forces in South Vietnam. The Dixie Station operating area is southeast of Cam Ranh Bay at 11N 110E.
• 7 June 1965 - Westmoreland cables the Pentagon that the ARVN are collapsing and says to convince the VC they cannot win he needs 41,000 more combat troops now and another 52,000 later. This would increase total US strength from the current 82,000 to 175,000.
• 18 June 1965 - In an army coup, Nguyen Cao Ky takes power as prime minister with Nguyen Van Thieu as chief of state. A top US official described Ky and Thieu in hindsight as "the bottom of the barrel, absolutely the bottom of the barrel."
• 28 July 1965 - LBJ at a noontime press conference announces he will meet the mounting aggression by sending 44 combat battalions to Vietnam.
• August 1965 - Combined Action Platoons (CAPs) are formed by U.S. Marines, utilizing South Vietnamese militia units to protect villages and to conduct patrols to root out VC guerrillas. The Marines philosophy differs sharply from Westmoreland's strategy of "search and destroy" which plays to VC and NVA strengths.
• 5 August 1965 - VC destroy two million gallons of fuel stored near DaNang.
• 18-21 August 1965 - US Marines win a significant victory in their first major engagement south of their base at Chu Lai, convincing many, at least at that time, including oddly even Newsweek's Bernard Fall, that the US effort could not fail.
• Early September 1965 - Westmoreland requests 35,000 more troops to take us from 175,000 to 210,000 by end of the year.
• Mid October 1965 - Westmoreland revises estimates of troop strength he would need by July 1966, from 275,000 and now wants 325,000 and possibly more, later.
• 14-19 November 1965 - Two NVA regiments engage the US Army's 1st Air Mobile Cavalry Division (recall that elements of the 1st Air Cav bumped AG2 Fehr from his plane on Wake Island in August) and the 1st Battalion of the 7th Cavalry Division amid the elephant grass and huge anthills in the Ia Drang Valley in west central South Vietnam near the Cambodian border. After the fierce fighting, the NVA left over 1,300 dead while the US suffers over 300 KIA.
• 28-29 November 1965 - Defense Secretary McNamara hears Westmoreland talk of 400,000 US troops by end of 1966, with possibly at least 200,000 more in 1967. The political situation in South Vietnam is unstable; pacification (winning the "hearts and minds") has stalled; and ARVN desertions are skyrocketing.
• 22 December 1965 - The White House announces a thirty-hour cease fire including a bombing halt over North Vietnam (the second pause) beginning Christmas Eve. It is eventually extended until the end of January 1966, to mount a failed diplomatic effort to move Hanoi toward negotiations.
• December 1965 - By years end, US troop levels reach 184,300.
• In 1965, air sorties reach a total of 25,000, tonnage of bombs dropped hits 65,000, but infiltration of North Vietnamese troops via the Ho Chi Minh trail is an estimated 35,000 men. Military intelligence, let's avoid the temptation to label this phrase, believes there are now nine NVA regiments in the South, not three, and VC regiments now number twelve as opposed to five.
• 1965 - Man of the Year - Time Magazine chooses General William Westmoreland.

• The unofficial national anthem for GIs in 'Nam is created by Eric Berdon and the Animals - We Gotta Get Out of this Place! Bob Dylan asks how does it feel, to be on your own - Like a Rolling Stone, yet the Rolling Stones can't get no Satisfaction. The Beatles led (Help, Ticket to Ride, We Can Work It Out, Yesterday) British invasion is continued by the Rolling Stones (Get Off of My Cloud, Under My Thumb), and the Dave Clark Five (Catch Us If You Can, I Like It Like That). Herman's Hermits believe I'm Henry the VIII, I Am and that Mrs. Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter.

• Sonny & Cher declared I Got You Babe, and the Yardbirds are anxious For Your Love. Jackie DeShannon realizes What The World Needs Now Is Love. Tom Jones inquires What's New Pussycat? In Taipei, the McCoys' Hang On Sloopy is immense. Tom Jones knows It's Not Unusual. Stop, In The Name Of Love by the Supremes and Wooly Bully by Sam The Sham & The Pharohs are big hits in 1965.