Saigon execution: Murder of a Vietcong by Saigon Police Chief, 1968

South Vietnamese Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan, chief of the national police, shoots Vietcong officer Nguyen Van Lem, also known as Bay Lop, on a Saigon street on Feb. 1, 1968.

After Nguyen Ngoc Loan raised his sidearm and shot Vietcong operative Nguyen Van Lem in the head he walked over to the reporters and told them that, “These guys kill a lot of our people, and I think Buddha will forgive me.” Captured on NBC TV cameras and by AP photographer Eddie Adams, the picture and film footage flashed around the world and quickly became a symbol of the Vietnam War’s brutality. Eddie Adams’ picture was especially striking, as the moment frozen is one almost at the instant of death. Taken a split second after the trigger was pulled, Lem’s final expression is one of pain as the bullet rips through his head. A closer look of the photo actually reveals the bullet exiting his skull. The gif from the execution (graphic images!).
“Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world,” AP photojournalist Eddie Adams once wrote. A fitting quote for Adams, because his 1968 photograph of an officer shooting a handcuffed prisoner in the head at point-blank range not only earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 1969, but also went a long way toward souring Americans’ attitudes about the Vietnam War. For all the image’s political impact, though, the situation wasn’t as black-and-white as it’s rendered. What Adams’ photograph doesn’t reveal is that the man being shot (named Nguyen Van Lem) was the captain of a Vietcong “revenge squad” that had executed dozens of unarmed civilians earlier the same day. Regardless, it instantly became an icon of the war’s savagery and made the official pulling the trigger – General Nguyen Ngoc Loan – its iconic villain.


South Vietnamese sources said that Lém commanded a Vietcong death squad, which on that day had targeted South Vietnamese National Police officers, or in their stead, the police officers’ families. Corroborating this, Lém was captured at the site of a mass grave that included the bodies of at least seven police family members. Photographer Adams confirmed the South Vietnamese account, although he was only present for the execution. Lem was the leader of a Vietcong death squad who was captured after killing a SVN General and his family that morning, among others. He was brought to Loan who questioned him briefly then using his personal .38 revolver, executed Lém in front of AP photographer Eddie Adams and NBC television cameraman Vo Suu.
Photographer said he had a lot of sympathy for the shooter and wished he had never published. Adams felt so bad for Loan that he apologized for having taken the photo at all, admitting, “The general killed the Vietcong; I killed the general with my camera.”On Nguyen Ngoc Loan and his famous photograph, Adams wrote in Time in 1998:

Two people died in that photograph: the recipient of the bullet and General Nguyen Ngoc Loan. The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapons in the world. People believe them; but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths. … What the photograph didn’t say was, ‘What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American people?’…. This picture really messed up his life. He never blamed me. He told me if I hadn’t taken the picture, someone else would have, but I’ve felt bad for him and his family for a long time. … I sent flowers when I heard that he had died and wrote, “I’m sorry. There are tears in my eyes.”

Adams later apologized in person to General Nguyen and his family for the irreparable damage it did to the General’s honor while he was alive. When Nguyen died, Adams praised him as a “hero” of a “just cause”.

• What happened to General Nguyen Ngoc Loan after the war?

Sadly, the photograph’s legacy would haunt Loan for the rest of his life. A few months after the execution picture was taken, Loan was seriously wounded by machine gun fire that led to the amputation of his leg. Following the war, he was reviled where ever he went. After an Australian hospital refused to treat him, he was transferred to the United States, where he was met with a massive (though unsuccessful) campaign to deport him. He opened a pizza restaurant in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Burke, Virginia at Rolling Valley Mall called “Les Trois Continents.” In 1991, he was forced into retirement when he was recognized and his identity publicly disclosed. Photographer Eddie Adams recalled that on his last visit to the pizza parlor, he had seen written on a toilet wall, “We know who you are, fucker”. Nguyễn Ngọc Loan died of cancer on 14 July 1998, aged 67, in Burke, Virginia.

• Did Loan’s action violate the Geneva Conventions for treatment of prisoners of war?

He executed the partisan after he had stumbled upon the bodies of his men and even their families that were killed by Viet Cong. The Vietcong were indiscriminately killing people. Summary execution of partisans is allowable under Geneva.
According to Article 4 of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949, irregular forces are entitled to prisoner of war status provided that they are commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates, have a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance, carry arms openly, and conduct their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war. If they do not do meet all of these, they may be considered francs-tireurs (in the original sense of “illegal combatant”) and punished as criminals in a military jurisdiction, which may include summary execution. The guy shot was an “illegal Combatant”, a francs-tireurs. Soldiers who are wearing uniforms of the opposing army after the start of combat may be considered illegal combatants and subject to summary execution.
However, if soldiers remove their disguises and put on proper insignia before the start of combat in such an operation, they are considered legal combatants and must be treated as prisoners-of-war if captured. This distinction was settled in the post-WWII trial of Otto Skorzeny, who led Operation Greif, an infiltration mission in which German commandos wore US uniforms to infiltrate US lines but removed them before actual combat.

Charles Darwin's Galapagos tortoise

This Galapagos tortoise that died in 2006 at Steve Irwin's zoo was originally owned by Charles Darwin in 1835.

A soldier faints from the heat at a crucial moment during the Trooping the Colour to mark Queen Elizabeth’s birthday in 1970.

In the strict world of British military protocol, there are even rules on how to faint with dignity. There are two main reasons why the guards of honor pass out: it can get pretty hot and they’ll lock their knees. Usually it’s the combination of both that gets you. And in fact “don’t lock the knees!” is the advice given to troops standing in formation for long periods in the heat.
By locking your knees, you are resting all your weight on the bones and your muscles doesn’t get to work. The blood flowing to your legs has the benefit of the heart pumping it there. Once blood is there, it needs the action of leg muscles to help pump it back to the heart. Locking your knees makes standing upright and still easier, but decreases the use of your leg muscles in standing. This causes the blood to pool in your legs, effectively taking it out of circulation.
If your body is moving, contraction in muscles happen and that pushes your blood in veins towards heart. If the knees are locked and there is no movement, there are no contractions and thus the amount of the blood reaching heart decreases, which also decreases blood supply to brain. When the brain senses a dangerous drop in oxygen, you pass out. An intuitive way of conceptualizing it: blood flow isn’t fighting gravity when everything is on the same level. By passing out, your brain gets itself, the legs, and the heart all on the same plane so no more relying on leg muscles to overcome gravity.
On parade, the guard of honor has to keep his knees very slightly bent, and he have to rock back and forth on his toes and heels, with his feet being opposites at all times. The knees bent and shifting on his feet keeps his blood circulating. Basically, the guard of honor must stand on his left foot’s toes while he’s on his right foot’s heel, and gently reverse the situation. He just have to do it subtly, gradually and very gently so it doesn’t get noticed (though there’s usually enough room in parade boots to get away with it easily enough).
Interesting facts:

• If a guard of honor loses his consciousness while his knees are locked his body falls like an upright board that is tipped over. His head will be moving at a pretty good clip when it hits the ground and he can actually be injured fairly badly. Falling face first often ends up with the horrible sound of teeth breaking.

• Photo taken during Trooping the Colour, an annual parade of the entire Household Division. Part of that parade is an inspection, which involves the Queen riding around the troops. The picture is taken on the second part of that, where she’s inspecting them from the back.

West Germans stare down the East after a young woman made it across the line.

West Germans stare down the East after a young woman made it across the line.

The entrance to Disneyland in 1965

The entrance to Disneyland in 1965, when parking was only $0.25

The burning monk, 1963

In June of 1963, Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk Thích Quang Duc burned himself to death at a busy intersection in Saigon.

In June of 1963, Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk Thích Quang Duc burned himself to death at a busy intersection in Saigon. He was attempting to show that to fight all forms of oppression on equal terms, Buddhism too, needed to have its martyrs.
The self-immolation was done in protest to the South Vietnamese Diem regime’s pro-catholic policies and discriminatory Buddhist laws. In particular this was a response to the banning of the Buddhist flag, just 2 days after Diem had held a very public ceremony displaying crosses; earlier in his rule he had dedicated Vietnam to Jesus and the Catholic Church. The growing resentment of Buddhists under Diem was one of the underlying issues of South Vietnam, and eventually led to a coup to put in place a leader who would not alienate Buddhists, who made up 70-90% of Vietnam’s population.
John F. Kennedy said in reference to a photograph of Duc on fire, “No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one”. Photographer Malcolm Browne captured the scene in Saigon for the Associated Press, and the stark black and white image quickly became an iconic visual of the turbulent 1960s.
Buddhist discontent erupted following a ban in early May on flying the Buddhist flag in Huế on Vesak, the birthday of Gautama Buddha. A large crowd of Buddhists protested the ban, defying the government by flying Buddhist flags on Vesak and marching on the government broadcasting station. Government forces fired into the crowd of protesters, killing nine people.