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The Japanese seizure of Rabaul on New Britain in January 1942 directly threatened Northern Australia and, as a result, General Douglas MacArthur took command of the Southwest Pacific Area.
With the American-supported South Vietnamese government verging on collapse in early 1965, American President Lyndon Johnson decided to commit American conventional ground forces in the form of a United States Marine Corps (USMC) brigade of approximately 3,000 men on March 8, 1965.
Almost since the advent of warfare, civilians have suffered ‘collateral damage’, but the concept of Total War – a war without limits – only surfaced in the early part of the twentieth century.