It was the bubonic plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. This outbreak, the first known bubonic plague pandemic in recorded human history, marked the first of many outbreaks of plague - a disease that claimed as many as 200 million lives throughout history.
A key element to the design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is the names of the men and women who died while serving with the U.S. armed forces in the Vietnam War. There are more than 58,000 names inscribed on the black granite Memorial. The list of names begins at the vertex of the walls below the year of the first casualty and continues to the end of the east wall. It resumes at the tip of the west wall, ending at the vertex, above the year of the last death.
During the war, the United States lost 58,220 military personnel, in which 47,434 were killed in action while 10,786 died by other causes 3. All of them were listed on the Vietnam War Memorial located in Washington D.C. Among the allies, South Korea suffered the highest casualties with 4,407 killed in action4; Australia had 5005; Thailand, 351; and New Zealand, 834.