The Vietnam War was a war fought between 1961 and 1975 on the ground in South Vietnam and bordering areas of Cambodia and Laos (See Secret War) and in bombing runs (Rolling Thunder) over North Vietnam. See also the timeline of the Vietnam War.

Fighting on one side was a coalition of forces including the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam or the "RVN"), the United States, South Korea, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines. Fighting on the other side was a coalition of forces including the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the National Liberation Front, a South Vietnamese guerrilla movement known in the U.S. as the "Viet Cong". The USSR and People’s Republic of China provided intermittent military aid and diplomatic and moral support to the North Vietnamese and to the NLF, but they were not military combatants.

The war was part of a larger regional conflict involving the neighboring countries of Cambodia and Laos, known as the Second Indochina War. In Vietnam, this conflict is known as the American War (Vietnamese Chiến Tranh Chống Mỹ Cứu Nýớc, literally War Against the Americans to Save the Nation). Many experts consider the war to be a larger battle in the then-ongoing Cold War.

Excerpt from article from the free dictionary Wikipeda: READ MORE