1959 was also the start all out military action when on September 16 two companies of the ARVN 23d Division were ambushed by a well-organized force of several hundred identified only as the 2d Liberation Battalion. The Americans had been in Vietnam since November 1, 1955. 1955 was when the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) that reorganized from a general Indochina into the different countries that the deployments were stationed. So on November 1, 1955 a Vietnamese MAAG was created.