Perhaps one of the most iconic images to come out of the Vietnam War this photo depicts a uniformed South Vietnamese officer shooting a prisoner in the head. When you look into it, however, there is much more to this photograph than first meets the eye. There is an undeniable brutality to this photo, but even Eddie Adams – who won a Pulitzer Prize for capturing this shot – later admitted that it didn’t tell the whole story and he stated that he wished he hadn’t taken it at all.
Looking at this image out of context, it appears as though an officer is gunning down an innocent prisoner, perhaps even a civilian. You are apparently witnessing a savage war crime. That is the reason this image was adopted by anti-war protesters as an indictment against the Vietnam War. Without understanding the background, there is no reason to think that is not the case. It seems like yet another image showing someone acting horrifically and immorally during war time. But, when you learn the story behind the man who is being executed in this photo, the image and the reasoning behind the execution becomes a little bit clearer.
This man’s name was Nguyen Van Lem, but he was also known as Captain Bay Lop. Lem was no civilian; he was a member of the Viet Cong. Not just any member, either, he was an assassin and the leader of a Viet Cong death squad who had been targeting and killing South Vietnamese National Police officers and their families.
Lem’s team was attempting to take down a number of South Vietnamese officials. They may have even been plotting to kill the shooter himself, Major General Nguyen Ngoc Loan. It is said that Lem had recently been responsible for the murder of one of Loan’s most senior officers, as well as the murder of the officer’s family.
According to accounts at the time, when South Vietnamese officers captured Lem, he was more or less caught in the act, at the site of a mass grave. This grave contained the bodies of no less than seven South Vietnamese police officers, as well as their families, around 34 bound and shot bodies in total. Eddie Adams, the photojournalist who took the shot, backs up this story. Lem’s widow also confirmed that her husband was a member of the National Liberation Front (Viet Cong), and that he disappeared before the beginning of the Tet Offensive.
After being captured with the bodies during the Tet Offensive, Nguyen Van Lem was taken to Major General Ngoc Loan. In a street in Saigon, Loan executed Lem with his .38 caliber Smith & Wesson.
The photographer, Eddie Adams, had this to say of capturing the photo:
I just followed the three of them as they walked towards us, making an occasional picture. When they were close – maybe five feet away – the soldiers stopped and backed away. I saw a man walk into my camera viewfinder from the left. He took a pistol out of his holster and raised it. I had no idea he would shoot. It was common to hold a pistol to the head of prisoners during questioning. So I prepared to make that picture – the threat, the interrogation. But it didn’t happen. The man just pulled a pistol out of his holster, raised it to the VC’s head and shot him in the temple. I made a picture at the same time…
The General then walked up to Adams and said, “They killed many of my people, and yours, too,” then walked away.
Was this the right thing to do? As with so many things connected to war, the answer to that question is murky at best. Military lawyers have not yet decided with complete certainty whether or not Loan’s actions violated the Geneva Conventions relating to the treatment of prisoners of war, so there is no official decision on the matter. From Loan’s perspective, the man before him was a cold blooded killer who not only killed some of his friends and colleagues, but their families and other innocent people. This was a dangerous man, who in the name of patriotism nonetheless believed his political stance justified his actions, as presumably did General Loan himself concerning the execution. The question is- how would you have reacted, on both sides of the coin?
This may have been the end of Lem’s life, but it was not the end of the story. The image of Lem’s execution, and public reaction to it, played a small role in bringing the Vietnam War to an end. Although that is no bad thing, it also demonized General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, which was something Eddie Adams was extremely sorry for. He was quoted as saying,
The General killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon 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 soldiers?”
Adams felt that, by taking the photo, he had ruined Loan’s life. He felt Loan was a good man, in a bad situation, and he deeply regretted the negative impact that the photo had on him. In fact, Major General Loan later moved to the United States. When he arrived, the Immigration and Nationalization Services wanted to deport him partially because of the photo taken by Adams. They approached Adams to testify against Loan, but Adams instead testified in his favor and Loan was allowed to stay. When Loan died of cancer in 1998, Adams stated, “The guy was a hero. America should be crying. I just hate to see him go this way, without people knowing anything about him.”
Additional Facts:
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. In 1975, the former General, Nguyen Loan, opened a pizza parlor, which he ran until 1991, when his identity was discovered and he was forced to retire after receiving many threats.
Loan and his wife at the pizza restaurant they opened in the D.C. suburb of Burke, Virginia at Rolling Valley Mall called “Les Trois Continents.”
Widow Nguyen Thi Lop holding mementos of VC husband identified in picture
Nguyen Van Lem’s secret Viet Cong name, Captain Bay Lop, came from his wife, whose first name was Lop. Nguyen Thi Lop knew her husband, Van Lem, was a Viet Cong officer. But until she picked up a newspaper in February 1968, she didn’t know he had been arrested—or that he was dead, until she saw Eddie Adams’ photo of her 36-year-old husband being executed three days before by Saigon’s police chief, Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan.
Newly pregnant and fearful of the South Vietnamese authorities, Lop took her two daughters, then 13 and 3, from their house near Saigon’s airport and moved in with relatives nearby. She struggled, working a multitude of odd jobs, until the war ended. After the war she was given a monthly pension, a “gratitude house” and a scholarship for her son who was born eight months after his father’s death.
Verification that the above story is true can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nguy%E1%BB%85n_Ng%E1%BB%8Dc_Loan#cite_note-6
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This story was initially published on March 19, 2013 by Lauren Corona on the website: http://www.todayifoundout.com/
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CherriesWriter - Vietnam War website 
Great article. Thank you for it. In country August 7, 1969-July 31, 1970.
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I agree, now, that General Lian did what he had to. I did not agree before knowing the facts about Lop being an assassin who murdered innocent family members.
One of the children who was shot by Lop, John Edwards, survived, emigrated to the US and became a general in the US Air Force.
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Interesting article, I’ve seen the picture many times before but never saw the story that went with it. Fascinating, too bad the rest of the world doesn’t take the time to get the facts behind the story.
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Captain Bay Lop was a member of a hostile nation’s armed force, not in uniform, and undertaking military activity in another nation. In the military, we call those spies.
Under the provisions of the Geneva and Hauge Conventions, he was a military spy who had just committed multiple murders. He wasn’t due a trial or hearing of any kind and, under the Geneva Convention, was subject to being shot on sight.
Which he was.
General Loan was 100% correct, under the Geneva Convention, the Hauge Conventions, the oath he swore to his country. and the bond between him and his fellow warriors.
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I recall seeing this photo in Time magazine , when I was 10 years old. Not knowing the facts , I think I viewed it as a wartime atrocity. Knowing the background now , this man deserved to die , as he was in the Viet Cong , and brutally shot , killed , and who knows what else he had done , to Saigon National Police and their families. Thank you for the whole story.
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It sounds to me like he got what he deserved. War is he’ll!
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Viet Cong officer Nguyen Van Lem, also known as Bay Lop, was a mass-murderer who had brutally slaughtered an unarmed South Vietnamese officer and all his family members including his elder parents, his wife, and his young children when I came home to celebrate Tet. Viet Cong had violated the ceasefire agreement when they launched the un-expected Tet offensive.
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Sad….
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the photo after the lens of a camera is a photo. but the picture after the lens of our eyes has a lot more than just a picture. It all depends on the person behind the lens, then it is interpreted. Don’t blame on yourself Eddie. Nobody should be blamed here. All were forced to do what they thought was the most correct one at that moment. Thank you for sharing the stories. With the war, there is no winner. Both are losers.
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This is a message to all. You have to do things that are not cool looking to make a point.
I hated to see our guys get shot I know it is war but justice is what it is. Our special teams were delt with also.
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Some of the guys I knew the things they went through this guy got it easy.
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Using Wikipedia as a citation for it being true drags down your credibility
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I disagree, because I look up everything I do not know on Wikipedia. It tells a story that matches up with my perception of reality, as well, whether it is a story about the Civil War, or about the Vietnam War, Wikipedia gathers verifiable information as best they can. [They do not allow posts like Alex Jones: “there’s a secret child sex ring at Comet Pizza, Washington, D.C.] Jones’ completely just made up out of whole cloth story caused a guy who lives in Salisbury, NC to do four years in prison, and Jones doesn’t take any responsibility–he doesn’t even send commissary money. I live off Old Salisbury Rd about 20 miles from the North Carolinian who, unfortunately, believed everything he heard on right wing bullshit radio, now he’s doing the time for his “investigation”. Do you have a similar story of the danger of information from Wikipedia?
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It’s time for article like this to be gone. Move on. A lot of comments show how ignorant people are about the war. Let them live and die carrying their ignorance and hatred. That’s the only good thing about keeping this article.
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Johnnh,
I read all your comments and obviously you failed to understand a few things.
1. Lem was a murderer or a terrorist if you will and he had murdered many innocent people, including children. Obviously, he didn’t value life, therefore, he didn’t deserved to live. Who knows how many innocent people he had killed prior to being caught.
2. The general, under the chaos of war, had no choice but to put Lem down. The general has not resources to keep him captive, letting him go would mean more innocent people die; sending him off to the after life would mean no more innocent people die by Lem or Bay Lop. It’s a matter of math at that point. If I were the general, I wouldn’t have put him down in plain site, I would have taken him to the woodshed and quietly show him the way to hell. By the way, I was a Vietnamese all my life, I never come across a name LEM before, where the hell did the Viet Cong find that terrorist? He must have been one of the ChiCOM incorporated.
In any case, after 40 something years of Communists rule, South Vietnam, once a model country for Southeast Asia, has become what our President lovingly called, ” A Sh*t Hole”, as in all communist countries. And yes, I did go back to Vietnam, not to show off, but to witness the sad state that country after many years under communism. And, yes, my father fought to the last second and he was captured and forced into “Re-educational Camp” as the Viet Cong called it. It was more like a hell to put it mildly.
Johnnh, you called others in this blog ignorant, but I think it is you, who are what you call others. The North Vietnamese Communists said they want to free South Vietnamese, but we didn’t want to be freed. We were doing just fine, we had freedom, we had prosperity, we were happy until we were forced to be united with the less free, less happy and less prosperous North Vietnam and less educated! You get the point? Communism sounds good until you grow up in that sh*t. I apologize for using some colorful language here but I am trying hard to drive home the point for Mr. JOHNNH’s benefit.
Finally, I just want to take this opportunity to THANK all our American soldiers who have given so much to try to preserve the free South Vietnam. You did not let us down. You did put the stop to the spread of communism to other southeast countries. I also want to offer a prayer for all our fallen soldiers, Americans as well as the South Vietnamese soldiers. Their sacrifices will not go in vain because there will also be people who will continue to fight for freedom throughout the world, myself included, no matter how small contribution, to honor their sacrifices.
Thank you, America. Thank you, Canada. Thank you, Australia. Thank you, France. Thank you, South Korea and all freedom lovers around the world. Thank you!
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Ignorant? yes, my thoughts exactly and you are the living proof. Murderer? like My Lai and such? Boys and girls and babies, cows and pigs and chicken and rice fileds are communists, too? Well, I am wasting my time here. Bye.
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JOHNNH, I had to agreed, most of us VietnAmericans and the free world are ignorant, according to you, and we don’t know anything about My Lai.
But as ignorant as we are, we know that a few bad American soldiers committed a massacre; but we also know that the good American soldiers put a stop to it when they found out it. You see, Americans will acknowledge when they are wrong and seek to correct it. Americans are not perfect people but that doesn’t mean they don’t seek to be better.
However, we need to give credit where credit is due. Even with all her defects, America has done more good for the world than all communist countries combine at any given time.
So tell us then, when was there a time the communists anywhere in the world seek to correct their wrong doings? The common knowledge is, communists never admit their wrong doings; if anything, they hide it and double down on it. It is proven that communism and mass killing goes hand in hand, even a blind man can see it. You, JOHNNH, seem to be ok with it, you seem to defend it, you seem to find excuses for it. We don’t understand you. We are not as educated as you. So educate us then about communist crimes, in the past and the present…we like to know more. You see, you are not wasting your time because we are eager to learn more about communists mass killing or lives destroyed by communism around the world – at least 100 millions from what I have learned. Damn, that’s a lot of people. But yea, tell us more about communism.
So how about you start teaching us about the Viet Cong strapping bombs to live, innocent Vietnamese babies and set those babies up as booby traps…
You see, Viet Cong are cowards, they don’t have the balls to fight heads on against American and South Vietnamese soldiers in the open battle fields. They hid behind women and children and innocent people and used them as human shields. They don’t play by the rules and they don’t honor their promises or agreements they enter into. They got no morals.
It’s difficult to fight an enemy, who constantly and purposely hid behind innocent people, villagers, women and children, with the intention to confuse their enemies of who is who. Thus, My Lai.
It is difficult indeed.
Johnnh, you said that the American and South Vietnamese soldiers lost the war because they were bad. Let’s be very clear about one thing. The South Vietnamese lost their country because they trusted the North Vietnamese communists to abide by the Paris Peace agreement of 1972. It was the communists who violated their own agreement to end the war and bring peace to Vietnam.
The American defeated the powerful Japanese Empire, which was way more powerful than the Viet Cong, what make you think they can’t defeat the Viet Cong if they want to?
The Americans didn’t want to hurt the innocent people in North of Vietnam; that was the reason why they stay their hand. On the contrary, the Viet Cong seek to use and get the innocent people kill to score a meaningless victory. There lies the difference between good people vs bad people. And with my limited knowledge, I think the Viet Cong or communists in general, are the bad people.
What say you?
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JOHNH, I have no idea of your age, where you are from, or if you have ever served in any military (much less the U. S.) military. My guess is you have not, much less served under any sort of combat.
I was in the U. S. Army Signal Corp stationed in Can Tho, RVN (Republic Of Vietnam). My MOS was 36H-20 (Dial Central Office Repair) which means I was trained to repair a telephone exchange when a problem arises. This is only part of the job because maintenance had to be performed and certain monthly routines performed and logged with the results. This was not my job, though, because my MOS carried a J-6 modifier meaning I was trained as a Tandem Switch Repairman, we maintained the equipment and trunk lines in and out of the Delta at Can Tho Tandem. I arrived in country on Apr. 18, 1970 and came home on Jun. 24, 1971. We worked 12 hours a day 7 days a week and pulled guard duty at night once every two weeks. We received enemy fire maybe once a month, quite unlike many other places in country. One night (the one I can never forget) started the same as most any other night, did routine testing and monitored the trunk lines to one of the other sites. The Army had 2 sites in VN Can Tho, Gung Chua Mtn., and one in Bangkok Thailand. The A.F. had sites at Tan Son Nhut, Cam Rahn Bay and after 48 years I do not remember if I forgot any. Back to that night, it was early morning I believe when the first round came in. I don’t know when the 42nd and finally round hit.we started monitoring trunk lines to Tan Son Nhut because that was at Saigon. We finally found a circuit that was very interesting. There was a Colonel that called Saigon and he was livid. There were 2 Huey Cobras in the air that night and they spotted the tube and requested permission to fire. 2 GI’s died as a result of the incomming rounds. The Col. wanted to know why permission to destroy the tube was denied. The response was “the tube was set up in the school yard of a “PACIFIED” village. In order to destroy the tube, they would have to destroy the school and they couldn’t take the chanch of the American press getting that information.” None of the men I was stationed with were out to kill anyone. Our M-16′ were kept in a locked locker in our office. The only time we removed them was to clean them in prep for guard duty. In the morning the weapon was again cleaned and returned.
So, JOHNH, as I stated I don’t have any idea where you live, the only thing I can tell is you hate the United States and you know absolutely nothing about the Vietnam Conflict. That is what we were told for years since a state of war was not declared. If you care to check the facts you will see that President Eisenhower sent advisors to Vietnam after the French defeat at Dien Bin Phu. Pres. Kennedy sent in the Green Berets to assist. Both groups at that time were mainly advisory but would fire if their base were to be attacked. On the other hand, Johnson sent in a large increase in 1968. One other thing Johnson and his Sec. Of Defense McNamara is to impose unreasonable restrictions on the U. S. Forces he sent. These were called “Rules of Engagement” which stated depending where you were stationed, if you received fire you had to:
A) Request permission to return fire which went to Bn. maybe Bgde.
B) Request permission from Co., Bn., Bgde., Pentagon. So you ducked below the sandbags and waited, the trouble being you were over run or the bad guys went home.
See the problem is that allows the bad guys to keep coming back to kill more of your friends. And you mentioned the massacre at Me La I. I am in total agreement with you. It was terrible. The difference between you and me is you have no understanding of war. Myself, however, can understand how that could occur. When you are attacked almost every night and while your friends die you can do nothing, something is going to break. Also do not forget not every soldier on that patrol participated in the shootings.
I know you have learned all of the evils we committed, that is why we received the welcome we got upon our return. We were drunks, junkies, rapists, baby burners (my favorite). The best I was called was “no good motherf*****g baby burner.”
I know the smell of burning flesh, thank you VC. I know what it is like to watch body parts pulled from wreckage also thanks to the VC.
Please get an unbiased research on the atrocities committed by the communists in South Vietnam, which was to be an independent nation that was non communists. Most of the fighting done in the name of communism was by NVA in VC uniforms.
May you look at the complete war.
God bless you.
P. S. I don’t hate anyone now, not even Jane Fonda. I haven’t forgiven, I may never do that even though my God tells me I must, but I let go of the hate years ago.
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John, you’re wasting oxygen!
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“JOHNNH” is a butthurt commie apologist upset that people are learning the facts.
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Bravo Asian cowboy!!! Good riddance johnnh…
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Thank you, Christina Nguyen. I have more where that come from. I haven’t begun unload yet.
Glad to know freedom loving people like you out there.
Communism sucks!! For some reasons, every country who is friend of America seem to do well. Any country touched by communist turn into hell hole. Not sure why…maybe JOHNNH can enlighten us all why that is.
Pathetic!
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Well said Asian Cowboy!
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Thank you for speaking the truth. As a United States Army Veteran , I appreciate your comments. God bless you also Sir.
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Obviously , you are the type of individual who posts comments on impulse , with no prior knowledge or research. Read the well written rebuttals to your comment. Then , ask yourself , ” Am I still correct , with all these people negatively commenting on my post ? ” Answered honestly , you would do well to heed the advice of others. Not sure if you are prior military , but my sense is that you are not. I served my country overseas for 3 years in the United States Army , barely missing the Vietnam conflict. It was never a declared war sonny boy , so do your research prior to spitting out incorrect information. God Bless my fellow Vets , especially Vietnam Vets !!
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America invaded Vietnam just few days before the general elections in Vietnam…..
keep on believing in your insanity. Trump is right what you deserve
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Valentine, I have absolutely no idea what your rant is about and the point you are trying to make. ..
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Thank you for the interesting article.
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I was in-country during that event. I was out in the bush about 2 clicks from the Cambodia border with a unit of the 25ID, Tropic Lightning. A few days later, I was wounded, February 18, 1968, and sent to Japan for 45 days to recoup. They gave me a Purple Heart. It was the hottest year of the war, 1968… lots of enemy contact. We killed 1.2M of the enemy and lost 58K of our guys. Our losses were all hero’s, each and ever one. The enemy’s goal was to inflict as many US losses as possible so public opinion back home would oppose the war and force our President to pullout. It worked.
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To be honest i think the “enemy” was more concerned with survival than public opinion..
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