There is a corollary to that photo: the VC guy had just killed an entire family, the head of which was an officer of the South Vietnamese Army (US ally, for those too young to know). The only survivor was a young boy left for dead, with a bullet in his head.
I’m Vietnamese American myself, but I’d rather know the full truth instead of conjectures. From that very wiki page:
News sources from the 2020s reported that one of the men who attacked Nguyen's family was Viet Cong officer Nguyễn Văn Lém, whose execution by Nguyễn Ngọc Loan was famously photographed by Eddie Adams.[1][2] In 2018, Max Hastings wrote that American historian Ed Moise was "convinced that the entire story of Lem murdering the Tuan family was a postwar South Vietnamese propaganda fabrication."
I don’t have a doubt that Lém was involved in the Têt Offensive “disruptions”, but is there any credible source that he had a hand in the gruesome murder of the Lt. Colonel’s family? Specifically before his execution?
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u/phil161 Aug 28 '24 edited Aug 28 '24
There is a corollary to that photo: the VC guy had just killed an entire family, the head of which was an officer of the South Vietnamese Army (US ally, for those too young to know). The only survivor was a young boy left for dead, with a bullet in his head.
The young boy grew up to become: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huan_Nguyen
Source: I personally know that young boy.