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I assume you're talking about Soviet involvement here. Who did partake in combat against US forces and let's just say your claim of just 16 Soviet fatalities is a bit sketchy. Unless you can provide verifiable sources supporting your hypothesis,Indeed, from July 1965 to December 1974, more than 6000 generals and officers and more than 4,500 soldiers were sent to Vietnam as specialists. Of those around 16 were fatalities.
No record you say? China admits that such records do indeed exist.People's Liberation Army (PLA) forces first entered (North) Vietnam in July 1965 to help defend Hanoi and its major transportation systems. The total number of Chinese troops in (North) Vietnam between June 1965 and March 1968 amounted to over 320,000. There is no record of any of those troops serving in (South) Vietnam nor in combat against American forces.
"China admitted today that it sent 320,000 combat troops to Vietnam to fight against U.S. forces and their South Vietnamese allies. In a report monitored in Hong Kong, the semi-official China News Service said China sent the soldiers to Vietnam during the 1960s and spent over $20 billion to support Hanoi's regular North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong guerrilla units. The disclosure was made a month after military officials in the Soviet Union admitted that a contingent of Soviet advisers in Vietnam took part in combat against U.S. forces and helped shoot down American planes. Moscow had previously denied its troops played a combat role in the war. The agency report cited "The History of the People's Republic of China," published by the official State Archives Publishing House, as saying more than 4,000 Chinese soldiers were killed during the war. Fighting finally ended when victorious North Vietnamese tanks battered their way into the grounds of Doc Lap Palace in Saigon on April 30, 1975. During the war, U.S. intelligence reports said U.S. combat units had found soldiers dressed in Chinese combat gear and wearing Chinese insignia, but Beijing at the time repeatedly denied U.S. allegations that its soldiers were operating in Vietnam. During the 10 years of direct U.S. involvement, American troop levels reached over 500,000. Estimates of North Vietnamese Army units varied, but Hanoi maintained throughout the war that its soldiers went only as volunteers to help the southern Viet Cong guerrilla movement."
320, 000 troops is not a drop in the bucket given the timeframe of China's involvement as opposed to the US's troop rotations spanning over 12 years.Those number make the mere (roughly) 2,700,000 American men and women that served in Vietnam seem like a drop in the bucket.
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