
Originally Posted by
Michael Maclear and Haul Buell
SAIGON EXECUTION
February 2, 1968 --It was the second day of the Tet Offensive and Vietnam was under massive attack at multiple fronts by the Vietcong and by the North Vietnamese army. The enemy struck with surprising strength in many cities and into the courtyard of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.
Photographer Eddie Adams, working his third stint for AP in Vietnam, and National Broadcasting Co. cameraman Vo Su, prowled the streets of Saigon looking for war. The two photographers, office neighbors who frequently shared transportation and news tips, teamed up to investigate reports of fighting in Cholon, Saigon's Chinese section.
The two photographers looked around Cholon but it appeared that fighting has eased up. The debris of aftermath littered the streets, but not much more. They were about to depart when they heard shots a block or so away. The two moved toward the action.
Eddie saw two Vietnamese soldiers pull a prisoner out of a doorway at the end of a street. The soldiers pushed and pulled what appeared to be a Vietcong infiltrator in a plaid shirt, his arms tied behind his back. He had been captured at a nearby pagoda in civilian dress and carrying a pistol.
Eddie recalls:
It looked like a 'perp walk' (covering crime suspects) in New York. And I covered it that way. I just followed the three of them as they walked toward us, making an occasional picture. When they were up 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,' Addams says. 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 the man just pulled a pistol out of his holster, raised it to the VC's head and shot him in the temple. I make a picture at the same time.'
The Vietcong fell to the pavement, blood gushing from his head. Eddie made a shot or two of the the man falling but then couldn't take any more and left. But not before the shooter, later identified as Lt. Col. Nguyễn Loan, police chief of South Vietnam, walked up to Adams and said, 'They killed many of my people, and yours, too.' And he walked away.
Back in the office Adams turned in his film and went to his hotel room, exhausted emotionally and upset by the incident. The pictures, the full sequence of the incident, were sent by radiophoto to the world.
The picture was a sensation. It became a political statement, printed and reprinted, appearing on placards at anti-war demonstrations and used by anti-war advocates as an example of the kind of allies the U.S. had in Vietnam. One writer described it: The shot not heard 'round the world, but seen 'round the world.
What never caught up with the impact of the picture was the fact that in the first hours of the Tet Offensive before Loan shot the man, Vietcong had beheaded a Vietnamese colonel and killed his wife and six children.
Bookmarks