What is the most memorable image of the Vietnam War?

2015-05-01T02:46:42-04:00

I watched the Vietnam war on TV. I have many images that I clearly recall as vivid memories of that war. What image is your most clear memory of that war?

Casualties of War: Unforgettable Photos of the Vietnam Era

30 powerful images of the conflict that defined a generation

Response by Col Private RallyPoint Member made May 1 at 2015 6:56 AM

2015-05-01T06:56:00-04:00

I would have to say the first one in your post. I will never forget the look on the victim's face.

Response by SSgt Private RallyPoint Member made May 1 at 2015 9:42 AM

2015-05-01T09:42:44-04:00

I would have to agree w/ Col Private RallyPoint Member. That picture just kind of sticks out. It harkens back to the photos of the genocide that the Nazis committed.

Response by SPC Private RallyPoint Member made May 1 at 2015 9:44 AM

2015-05-01T09:44:21-04:00

I really appreciate the picture of Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan in what has been called the "Saigon Execution", I took a History of the Vietnam War in college, and learned about the back story of the picture.

The man being executed is Vietcong Nguyen Van Lem, he had just be caught going through Saigon and murdering civilians and families. Gen Nguyen Ngoc Loan took him in the street and shot him. The photographer has since regretted taking and releasing the photo and has even said that:
"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. Still photographs are the most powerful weapons 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 people?’ This picture really messed up his life. He never blamed me. He told me if I hadn’t taken the picture, someone else would have."

Response by 1LT Private RallyPoint Member made May 1 at 2015 10:11 AM

2015-05-01T10:11:57-04:00

SFC Charles S.. Burst of Joy - Pulitzer Prize winning photo of POW homecoming. Warmest, Sandy

o http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/coming-home-106013338/

Response by SPC Charles Brown made May 1 at 2015 11:08 AM

2015-05-01T11:08:17-04:00

SFC Charles S. the pictures released of the My Lai Massacre, the execution of the prisoner by the RVN General. nest would be the Helicopter evacuation, and finally any pictures of Hanoi Jane visiting her friends in north Vietnam.

C.

Response by CPL Brendan Hayes made May 1 at 2015 2:39 PM

2015-05-01T14:39:33-04:00

The "Saigon Execution" will always stick in my memory. What makes it more memorable is that there is video footage of the event. Eddie Adams, who took the photo, was there with a NBC television cameraman. The NBC cameraman caught the same event on film. I had a professor in college show us both the picture and the film clip. Both have been stuck in my head since.

Response by 1LT Private RallyPoint Member made May 2 at 2015 3:14 AM

2015-05-02T03:14:06-04:00

SFC Charles S.. It is important to know the AP/Hubert Van Es photo often mistakenly attributed to US Military UH-1D picking up personnel from US Embassy roof . . . was more clearly captured by UPI/Phillippe Buffon . . . CIA / Air America Bell 205 Helicopter N47004 . . . Pilot Robert Carin . . . Co-Pilot Jack "Pogo" Hunter . . . CIA Deputy Chief Embassy Air Branch Oren Bartholomew Harnage helping outside the aircraft . . . landing atop the elevator hoist house of the Pittman Apartment Building at 22 Gia Long Street (CIA Safe House . . . Residence of CIA Deputy Chief of Station Conrad “Connie” Edward LaGueux, USDOS personnel, USAID personnel, and CIA personnel) . . . under orders from CIA Station Chief Thomas Polgar to pickup RVN Deputy Prime Minister Tran Van Don, family, and RVN Secret Police Chief Tran Kim Tuyen. Warmest Regards, Sandy

"Stationing himself next to a ladder leading onto the roof, Mr. Harnage tried to help the Vietnamese families up. But the first man who appeared, Mr. Harnage recalled, was a Korean who was hysterical and Mr. Harnage punched him out of the way to maintain order. The Huey, the workhorse of the American effort in Vietnam, normally carried about eight passengers, but Mr. Harnage jammed in as many as 15 Vietnamese, and jumped on the helicopter's skid, standing in the open doorway as it flew to Tan Son Nhut on the edge of the city."

"Mr. Harnage, who was later awarded [the CIA Intelligence Star], made four or five of these flights to the air base, where larger Navy or Air Force helicopters ferried the families to ships waiting in the South China Sea."

Thomas Polgar, the Saigon station chief for the C.I.A., helped in coordinating these final evacuation efforts.

Just before Mr. Polgar destroyed the cable-sending machine the agency had used to communicate, just before he boarded a helicopter himself, he took a moment to type a last dispatch.

“This will be final message from Saigon station,” Mr. Polgar wrote. “It has been a long and hard fight and we have lost. This experience, unique in the history of the United States, does not signal necessarily the demise of the United States as a world power.”

“The severity of the defeat and the circumstances of it, however, would seem to call for a reassessment of the policies of niggardly half-measures which have characterized much of our participation here despite the commitment of manpower and resources, which were certainly generous. Those who fail to learn from history are forced to repeat it. Let us hope that we will not have another Vietnam experience and that we have learned our lesson.”

He concluded, “Saigon signing off.”

o http://philippe.buffon.free.fr/images/vietnamexpo/heloco/index.htm

Response by SMSgt Dan Powell made May 2 at 2015 7:46 AM

2015-05-02T07:46:32-04:00

SFC Staley, The photo of the children running from the napalm strike is one of the worst pieces of "journalism" put out about the Viet Nam War. For years I thought that the air strike was carried out by USAF A-1 Skyraiders. It turns out that there were no Americans involved in the whole incident. VNAF A-1s were attacking a VC unit that had taken over the village.

Response by CMDCM Gene Treants made May 2 at 2015 12:19 PM

2015-05-02T12:19:51-04:00

There are so many Pictures of the war that resonate in our memories, but some do not go away. One person still makes my skin crawl as she is respected and applauded by so many. "Hanoi Jane" Fonda.

One thing that really bothers me is that students today do not believe these are real pictures, but photo chopped. In case you had never heard or read it, here is the transcript of her radio broadcast of August 22, 1972 from her hotel room:

"This is Jane Fonda. During my two week visit in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, I've had the opportunity to visit a great many places and speak to a large number of people from all walks of life- workers, peasants, students, artists and dancers, historians, journalists, film actresses, soldiers, militia girls, members of the women's union, writers.

I visited the (Dam Xuac) agricultural coop, where the silk worms are also raised and thread is made. I visited a textile factory, a kindergarten in Hanoi. The beautiful Temple of Literature was where I saw traditional dances and heard songs of resistance. I also saw unforgettable ballet about the guerrillas training bees in the south to attack enemy soldiers. The bees were danced by women, and they did their job well.

In the shadow of the Temple of Literature I saw Vietnamese actors and actresses perform the second act of Arthur Miller's play All My Sons, and this was very moving to me- the fact that artists here are translating and performing American plays while US imperialists are bombing their country.

I cherish the memory of the blushing militia girls on the roof of their factory, encouraging one of their sisters as she sang a song praising the blue sky of Vietnam- these women, who are so gentle and poetic, whose voices are so beautiful, but who, when American planes are bombing their city, become such good fighters.

I cherish the way a farmer evacuated from Hanoi, without hesitation, offered me, an American, their best individual bomb shelter while US bombs fell near by. The daughter and I, in fact, shared the shelter wrapped in each others arms, cheek against cheek. It was on the road back from Nam Dinh, where I had witnessed the systematic destruction of civilian targets- schools, hospitals, pagodas, the factories, houses, and the dike system.

As I left the United States two weeks ago, Nixon was again telling the American people that he was winding down the war, but in the rubble- strewn streets of Nam Dinh, his words echoed with sinister (words indistinct) of a true killer. And like the young Vietnamese woman I held in my arms clinging to me tightly- and I pressed my cheek against hers- I thought, this is a war against Vietnam perhaps, but the tragedy is America's.

One thing that I have learned beyond a shadow of a doubt since I've been in this country is that Nixon will never be able to break the spirit of these people; he'll never be able to turn Vietnam, north and south, into a neo- colony of the United States by bombing, by invading, by attacking in any way. One has only to go into the countryside and listen to the peasants describe the lives they led before the revolution to understand why every bomb that is dropped only strengthens their determination to resist. I've spoken to many peasants who talked about the days when their parents had to sell themselves to landlords as virtually slaves, when there were very few schools and much illiteracy, inadequate medical care, when they were not masters of their own lives.

But now, despite the bombs, despite the crimes being created- being committed against them by Richard Nixon, these people own their own land, build their own schools- the children learning, literacy- illiteracy is being wiped out, there is no more prostitution as there was during the time when this was a French colony. In other words, the people have taken power into their own hands, and they are controlling their own lives.

And after 4,000 years of struggling against nature and foreign invaders- and the last 25 years, prior to the revolution, of struggling against French colonialism- I don't think that the people of Vietnam are about to compromise in any way, shape or form about the freedom and independence of their country, and I think Richard Nixon would do well to read Vietnamese history, particularly their poetry, and particularly the poetry written by Ho Chi Minh."

Response by PO2 Ron Burling made May 3 at 2015 2:04 PM

2015-05-03T14:04:53-04:00

In my mind, it is this one, which had nothing to do with any US Forces, but...

Response by SPC Edward Tapper made May 3 at 2015 5:47 PM

2015-05-03T17:47:29-04:00

I can remember the top photo and the photo of the children in the street.

Response by Lt Col Jim Coe made May 4 at 2015 3:32 PM

2015-05-04T15:32:30-04:00

Lockheed C-130 Hercules at Khe Sanh. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ1n2K1fY6w

Lockheed C-130 Hercules at Khe Sanh

C-130 operations in Vietnam

Response by Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. made May 4 at 2015 11:01 PM

2015-05-04T23:01:42-04:00

The below remains a memory because everytime I see or hear John Kerry, I hear an unrepentant liar who dishonored his uniform and Oath of office.

1970: John Kerry met with North Vietnamese Communists violating U.S. law
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He said in his book "The New Soldier": "But, unlike veterans of other wars and some of this one, the New Soldier does not accept the old myths. We will not quickly join those who march on Veteran's Day waving small flags, calling to memory those thousands who died for the "greater glory of the United States." "We will not readily join the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars...." "We will not uphold traditions which decorously memorialize that which was base and grim." ~ John Kerry
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More info at http://arkansasgopwing.blogspot.com/2012/12/question-john-kerry-long-and-hard.html

Response by SSgt Jim Rooth made May 5 at 2015 3:11 PM

2015-05-05T15:11:26-04:00

Many memories. I can honestly say I have seen these three images along with thousands of others that will never leave my mind. The smell in the air after a rocket or mortar attack. If you think that isn't an image, then I say you need to thank your lucky stars...

Response by SSG Paul Forel made May 6 at 2015 12:05 PM

2015-05-06T12:05:02-04:00

While loading up with wounded at a hot LZ, noticing one of the guys getting on our H model had a portion of his face blown apart from his skull, separated, and it was flapping in the wind.

He was smoking a cigarette (I did not ask him to put it out and in fact I used to pass out cigarettes occasionally when I found it necessary to do so) and I could see the space between his skull and his face with the cigarette bridging the space, holding the cigarette between his teeth.

Kind'a spooky looking and not a 'picture' I'll ever forget.

Naturally, every Halloween, he's the first thing that comes to mind.

Response by CW2 Max Dolan made Feb 23 at 2016 8:49 PM

2016-02-23T20:49:37-05:00

For me, it was the retreating image of the airport as I left the country for the last time. I didn't take a photo. It is locked here in my mind.

Response by SFC James Cameron made Jul 30 at 2020 8:01 PM

2020-07-30T20:01:30-04:00

I think of Paint it Black and Slicks heading to a LZ thanks to Tour of Duty. A picture my uncle showed me of himself with his Stoner Commando in his Team Room. The Razorbacks Gunships flying into a sunset.

Response by SGT Private RallyPoint Member made Jul 30 at 2020 9:58 PM

2020-07-30T21:58:58-04:00

All the protesting about the war in the US, on TV.

Response by SSG Paul Headlee made Jul 30 at 2020 10:35 PM

2020-07-30T22:35:18-04:00

Every time I see the footage of the Naval Officer, I think he was a Commander at the time, with his wife running to him on the tarmac being reunited after he returned from being a POW...I get a little misty.

Response by SPC Erich Guenther made Jul 31 at 2020 4:38 AM

2020-07-31T04:38:54-04:00

I was only a kid but pushing the UH-1 Helos off the Aircraft Carrier Deck into the Sea to make room for more comming in and some crash landing into the sea next to the Aircraft Carrier.