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 was no civilian he was a member of the Viet Cong. This man’s name was Nguyen Van Lem, but he was also known as Captain Bay Lop. 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. It seems like yet another image showing someone acting horrifically and immorally during war time. Without understanding the background, there is no reason to think that is not the case. That is the reason this image was adopted by anti-war protesters as an indictment against the Vietnam War. You are apparently witnessing a savage war crime. Looking at this image out of context, it appears as though an officer is gunning down an innocent prisoner, perhaps even a civilian. 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. When you look into it, however, there is much more to this photograph than first meets the eye. 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. Nguyen Ngoc Loan, chief of the national police, fires his pistol into the head of suspected Viet Cong officer Nguyen Van Lem, also known as Bay Lop, on a Saigon street, early in the Tet Offensive on Feb.

Famous vietnam photo gun to head