in 9 years of fighting and 10,000 were wounded. In 1965 Thailand sent a small army contingent to South Vietnam, known as the Queen's Cobra Battalion. It also pledged its national police force's air assets to monitor several segments of the Ho Chi Minh trail that passed through neighbouring Laos. Thailand contributed more than 12,000 troops, of which 351 were killed in action in Vietnam. Beginning in 1966, Philippines deployed upwards of 10,000 troops to help support the Saigon government, but kept its contribution limited to medical and logistical operations. Filipino casualties were minimal, yet the decision by the administration of Ferdinand Marcos to deploy troops to Indochina was still controversial domestically. One of the earliest foreign contributors to the Saigon government was the anti-communist Republic of China. In fact, Taiwan provided transport aircraft and secretly offered several hundred of its special forces soldiers to the cause beginning in 1961. Over the next 11 years, three aircraft were lost to enemy ground fire and a number of Taiwanese commandos were captured while on missions in North Vietnam. In all, 25 Taiwanese died in action in Vietnam. In addition, a number of other nations sent along small contingents of medical, transportation, construction and other experts as well as material help to the South Vietnamese government in Saigon. These nations were: Afghanistan, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, Denmark, Ecuador, France, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Laos, Liberia, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tunisia, Turkey, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Venezuela and West Germany. See also Vietnam_War#Involvement_of_other_countries South Korea in the Vietnam War Military history of Australia during the Vietnam War New Zealand in the Vietnam War Thailand in the Vietnam War Military_history_of_the_Philippines#Vietnam_War_(1964–1969) References Vietnam War Propaganda in the United States