So often the story of Viet Nam is told from a singular point of view. Only part of the story is told, and that part impacts people's lives in multiple negative ways because the truth is not known. One of the most impactful photographs of the 2nd Indochina War is the famous Eddie Adams photograph of Brig. General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing Bay Lop.
When this photograph hit the front page of the New York Times there was universal outrage. The brutality of the act repelled people. The New York Times continued to condemn Loan's actions after he became a US citizen. Not once did they ever mention what Bay Lop had done to deserve execution.
However, what the media didn't report might have completely changed the reaction of people worldwide. Had they published this picture, the execution of Bay Lop might have been put in a different context and changed the reaction to the photo of his execution.
The caption under the photo explains the scene. Before Bay Lop was executed, he and his fellow Viet Cong executed an entire family because the father, Lt. Col. Nguyen Tuan, refused to give them the information they wanted. Lt. Col. Tuan was decapitated, and his wife and six children were murdered with machine guns.
Eddie Adams, who took the famous photograph and won a Pulitzer Prize for it said, years later, "I won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for a photograph of one man shooting another. 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."
This next photo is an ARVN Major who came home to find his entire family slaughtered by the same group that slaughtered Col. Nguyen and his family.
The communists admitted to this atrocity in a document that was captured after Tet.[1. Department of Defense Intelligence Information Report re: VC Assessment of the Tet Offensive on Saigon - Support Document from Project CHECO Report #193, 21 May 1968, Folder 0132, Box 0006, Vietnam Archive Collection, The Vietnam Center and Archive, Texas Tech University. Accessed 16 Dec. 2017 <https://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/virtualarchive/items.php?item=F031100060132>.]
The units from the North could not arrive in time; therefore they attacked the Armor and Artillery [Camps] at Go Vap, killed the entire family of an Armor Colonel. Then coordination was effected among friendly troops in order to attack the Quang Trung [Training Center] and the [RVNAF] Joint General Staff.
This is a photo of the family's burial after Tet, including the small coffins of the children.
One of the children, Nguyễn Từ Huấn, survived and emigrated to the United States. He recently became the first Vietnamese-American Rear Admiral in the US Navy.
Bay Lop was the leader of that operation and was captured and executed shortly after for the murders. Before his capture, he used civilians as a human shield, the second war crime he had committed that day. (The first was the murders of the Tuan family.)
Brig. General Nguyen Ngoc Loan's execution of Bay Lop, although brutal, was legal under international law. Assassins in civilian clothes do not enjoy any of the protections of international law and are subject to immediate execution if captured.
This story is a microcosm of what went on in Vietnam. The communists routinely committed war crimes yet the media seldom reported them. The legal actions taken by the South Vietnamese and their allies, however, were often described as war crimes and routinely criticized as inhumane. This perspective affected the way people worldwide thought about the war and the actions of the South Vietnamese and their allies.
