In 1965, the U.S. sent 3,500 Marines into Vietnam to support the Air Force’s activities and begin the United States’ ground war in a region that had already seen decades of fighting. The surge was cause for General William Westmoreland to infamously predict victory by 1967 (sound familiar?), but by that time it was clear that America still had a long road ahead if it was to defeat communism in Southeast Asia.One thing made clear by the slow, steady buildup of opposition forces was that North Vietnam was much better at winning popular support. To that end, the Marines first sent into the country began various pacification efforts to try to help win support for the anti-Communist side. One such tactic was nicknamed ‘Operation County Fair,’ in which soldiers would round up all the citizens of a hamlet and send them off to hang out with a military band, see doctors, and get fed, all while the Marines searched houses looking for signs of enemy activity.It all sounds like a grand day out at the park, as glamorized in the video above. Of course, cavorting a band and local actors through a war zone doesn’t sound like the easiest thing to pull off, and according to other reports, the County Fair tactics were also used to round up and kill military aged men. The most heinous example of hamlet searches going horribly wrong is the massacre at My Lai, which was a major cause of Americans turning against the war. Knowledge of My Lai wasn’t made public until 1969, which makes it all the more interesting that just two years earlier hamlet searches were being billed as nothing more than a day at the fair.Follow Derek Mead on Twitter: @derektmead
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