The story behind iconic Female Viet Cong Guerrilla photograph, 1972

A Viet Cong guerrilla stands guard in the Mekong Delta.

Her name is Lam Thi Dep (Dep means beautiful in Vietnamese), the picture was taken in 1972 at Soc Trang Province by Vietnamese journalist Minh Truong. “You could find women like her almost everywhere during the war”, said the photographer. “She was only 24 years old but had been widowed twice. Both her husbands were soldiers”.

She’s wielding an M-16, the standard-issue American soldier’s rifle.

Usually, these types of photos were taken for propaganda purposes. North Vietnamese women were deeply involved at all levels of the military campaign throughout the war, especially at the business end, fighting against the American-led forces in the jungle.

North Vietnamese women were enlisted and fought in the combat zone as well as provided manual labor to keep the Ho Chi Minh trail open, cook for the troops, and some served as “comfort women” for male communist fighters.

They also worked in the rice fields in North Vietnam and Viet Cong-held farming areas in South Vietnam’s Mekong Delta region to provide food for their families and the war effort. Women were enlisted in both the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong guerrilla insurgent force in South Vietnam.

Why she’s carrying an American rifle?

The Viet Cong forces were very successful at acquiring and using American-made arms, which led directly to most of their big successes in the early to mid-60s. The weapons weren’t necessarily from dead American soldiers.

Remember, the US was propping up Diem’s South Vietnamese government, and pumping weapons into his alley’s extremely flawed and corrupt army. South Vietnamese local garrisons meant to protect rural areas from Viet Cong influence often simply gave arms and ammunition to the local Viet Congs to avoid being slaughtered.

M-16s had a 30% failure rate in most of the battles. The vast majority of the early failures were due to inadequate or even no care/cleaning of the rifles (in most cases they were issued without cleaning kits).

Most American soldiers that went into service with the M-16 were given virtually no training on how to care for the weapon, they assumed it would need the same amount of cleaning as the M-14, and M1-grand designs.

Once cleaning kits were dispensed and troops were trained how frequently to clean the weapon, failure rates on the M16 drastically went down. Still, they were high for a service weapon.

Comments

A horrific photograph of an execution in eastern Europe during the second world war

A horrific photograph of an execution in eastern Europe during the second world war can be seen in Holocaust archives and museums around the world. But who are the killers, who are the victims, who took it - and why? Janina Struk felt compelled to investigate Two naked men stand on the edge of a pit, an older man several feet behind them, while a man and a boy, also naked, walk into the frame. Surrounding them are seven perpetrators, some armed, some in uniform, some not. A uniformed man on the far right-hand side of the picture is standing on a mound of earth, presumably dug from the pit, seemingly directing proceedings. The caption reads: "Sniatyn - tormenting Jews before their execution. 11.V.1943." I first saw a copy of this image as I was filing through photographs in the Polish Underground Movement (1939-1945) Study Trust in west London. At the time I did not understand what I was looking at. I had never encountered a scene quite like it before. The pitiful...

Ohio Woman Who Posed with 20,000 Bees on Her Belly in Maternity Shoot Suffers Stillbirth

Ohio Woman Who Posed with 20,000 Bees on Her Belly in Maternity Shoot Suffers Stillbirth "Our baby has died. Our baby will never come home with us," Emily Mueller wrote in a heartbreaking Facebook post The Ohio mom of three who made headlines in August after posing with 20,000 bees on her belly in a shocking maternity shoot has suffered a stillbirth. “Yesterday evening we had to hand over our precious child and say goodbye to his physical body forever,” Emily Mueller, 33, wrote in a heartbreaking Facebook post on Monday, adding that she and her husband, Ryan Mueller, 37, named their late son Emersyn Jacob. “Our baby has died. Our baby will never come home with us,” she continued. “This wonderful rainbow baby we were blessed with has now become a storm in our lives. “Finding out your baby died is unfathomable. Learning you have to be induced and deliver your deceased child is way beyond that. My heart instantly ached for any woman that has told me she had a stillborn.” Emily, ...

The Secret Sex Lives of the Wild West - The Writer's Journey

The Wild West is often romanticized as a time of rugged individualism and adventure. But while there was certainly plenty of excitement to be found, life on the frontier was also harsh and unpredictable. This was especially true when it came to personal life. Here are some startling facts about personal life in the Wild West: Prostitution was common With a shortage of women in many parts of the West, prostitution was a thriving industry. In some towns, prostitutes outnumbered other women by as much as 25 to 1. “Prostitution was a necessary evil in the Wild West. There were simply not enough women to go around, and men needed a place to go for companionship and release.” — Historian Susan Johnson Marriage was often short-lived. The high mortality rate, combined with the transient nature of life on the frontier, meant that many marriages were short-lived. The average life expectancy in the Wild West was just 35 years old, and many couples lost spouses to accidents, disease, or violence....

Wooden Horse or Spanish Donkey

"Wooden Horse or Spanish Donkey" The wooden horse, or Spanish donkey, was an extremely painful and gruesome medieval torture device. It was first used by the Holy Inquisition in France and then in Spain and Germany, and then migrated to the Americas, gaining prominence during the colonial period. The main design was the same wherever it was used. It was a triangular wooden box with a very sharp top end (ie where the horse's spine would be). The apparatus was constructed of wood, with planks nailed together to form a long, tapered ridge, which would serve as the horse's back. These were supported by four legs attached to a bracket, about 6 or 7 feet (1.8 to 2.1 metres) high, with wheels fitted to the bottom of the legs so that the entire device could roll across the ground. A head and tail would be attached to make the torture device look like an almost “fun” huge wooden horse. The defendant would be mounted on the horse, with ankle weights and hands tied behin...

Marched to their deaths.

Marched to their deaths: Sickening ISIS slaughter continues as 250 soldiers captured at Syrian airbase are stripped then led to the desert for mass execution Sickening footage appears to show Islamic State militants parading around 250 captured soldiers through the desert in their underwear before they are killed and their bodies piled on the bare earth. An Islamic State fighter claimed the men were from the Syrian government's Tabqa air base which extremists seized on Sunday, potentially handing them warplanes, tanks, artillery and ammunition. The video, which has not been independently verified, is too graphic to be published in full. It begins by showing dozens of men being marched through the desert wearing only their underwear. It then fades to black, resuming with a pile of bloodied bodies stacked on top of one another. As the horrific footage progresses it pans slowly across a vast line of men who appear to be dead, and whose bodies have been laid out one by one. The line f...

The suspect was reported to have attempted to vandalise the Jos Electricity Distribution Company transformer located close to Joint Admission and Matriculation Board, JAMB in Otukpo.

Benue man electrocuted on a pole Several people besieged the major highway in Otukpo area of Benue State to catch a glimpse of a young man identified as Inalegwu Major whose lifeless body dangled on a transformer. The suspect was reported to have attempted to vandalise the Jos Electricity Distribution Company transformer located close to Joint Admission and Matriculation Board, JAMB in Otukpo. According to eyewitnesses, the suspect might have been electrocuted while trying to vandalise the transformer. An eyewitness who simply identified himself as Sunny said the dangling body of the suspect was noticed around 5:00am on Saturday by a passerby who raised an alarm. Sunny said, “It was around 5am this morning (Saturday) that a passerby raised the alarm of the lifeless body on a transformer, compelling several people to besiege the place to catch a glimpse of the suspect. A resident of the area said that the victim who was known as a notorious cable vandal had succeeded in removing so...

Woman in Iran before the Islamic Revolution

The Islamic Revolution of 1979 brought seismic changes to Iran, not least for women. One area that has come under scrutiny is the way women dress and wear their hair - the old Shah, in the 1930s, banned the veil and ordered police to forcibly remove headscarves. But in the early 1980s, the new Islamic authorities imposed a mandatory dress code that required all women to wear the hijab. Here are some images showing what life was like for Iranian women before the institution of clerical rule, and how it has changed since. IMAGE SOURCE,A. ABBAS / MAGNUM PHOTOS Studying at Tehran University in 1977: While many women were already in higher education at the time of the revolution, the subsequent years saw a marked increase in the number attending university. This was in part because the authorities managed to convince conservative families living in rural areas to allow their daughters to study away from home. "They tried to stop women from attending university, but there was such a bac...

Pata Seca; Meet Slave Whose Only Duty Was To Have Sex With Women To Procreate

Slaves were known to be priced possessions of their owners who mainly were used for hard labour especially on farms and other labourous areas of enterprise. It's a known fact that slavery contributed significantly to the development of the Western nations and some of the upcoming developed countries like Brazil and the likes. While I will not waste time to take you on History class or lessons, stumbled on a name and story that looked like fiction yet a true life and historical figure in Brazil. Pata Seca was a black slave in Brazil in the late 1880s, while there are varying versions of his story and biography one thing remained constant. That Pata Seca was a slave who didn't work on any farm, factory or engaged in any hard labour through out his life but was groomed, pampered and given preferential treatment is an irony only explained by the reason for which it happened. The whole arrangement was a sinister one aimed as using Pata Seca as a breeder of slaves, just as dogs and o...

This is what they did with ITALIAN WOMEN in World War 2!

Saturday, Sept. 11, 1943, was, in the words of the Piedmontese diarist Carlo Chevallard, a “day of humiliation and shame.” Chevallard, of French-Swiss descent, was the director of a metal factory and a cool observer of daily events. The streets of Turin were eerily quiet, except for the sounds of sporadic gunfire. There were no newspapers and the radio was silent. The few people who ventured onto the streets wandered about like “lost souls” trying to find out what was happening. Calls for volunteers to resist the German occupation went unheeded. Italy was now cut in two, the south in the hands of the Allies, the centre and the north occupied by the Germans, and communication between the two virtually ceased. For Ada and the anti-Fascists across Piedmont, Liguria and Emilia-Romagna in the north, it was a question of how to react, what to do next, how to tell friends from enemies and how best to navigate the coming months. Rommel had been brought back from Salonika to command ...

Most Brutal And Horrific Form Of Execution In The Acient History. - Education

Consider yourself lucky if you are reading this, you most likely not to have lived in a society with extreme judgements, sentences, and punishments. Back in the good old days if you did something wrong, for example stole a goat, chicken, Adultery, you were pretty much assured being handed a death sentence. In those days there was no hanging around on Death Row, contemplating the errors of your ways whilst waiting for some form of humane, painless death. Executions in the ancient history seems to be so barbaric and devices used were built with careful engineering to push the guilty to feel extreme and prolonged pain before death. The forms of execution listed below really are so barbaric that you might question your faith in human nature. Blowing from the gun. With the invention of the cannon came this wonderfully imaginative way of executing enemy combatants. The basic method was to tie the unfortunate victim to the barrel of a cannon and fire it. Horrific as this sounds I imagine it w...

Daily Narrative

Translate

Search This Blog

Most Brutal And Horrific Form Of Execution In The Acient History. - Education