I rather note deaths from either or a combination of both. I am receiving treatment for both. Diabetes since 1965, Parkinson's in the last couple of years or so.

Meanwhile, as to the war starting in 1965, we had troops allegedly training South Vietnamese troops in the 1950s. I rather suspect some of them were actually leading some of the same troops. Not sure how early we had troops there. I suspect shortly after we stopped fighting in Korea.

The first American to die in Vietnam, in the late 1940s, was a freight airplane pilot working for a company that would later be called Air America and run by the CIA.