The second picture is a really iconic photograph that reveals the brutality of the War. And not a lot of people knows what's really the story behind it.
The most influential photos always have a story attached to them. Napalm Girl, caught in a moment of desperation in 1972, encapsulated the terror of the U.S. war in Vietnam. The legend of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, the girl in question, was simple and gratifying to opponents of the war.
On June 7, 1972, elements of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) occupied the South Vietnamese town of Trang Bang. They were met by ARVN and the Vietnamese Air Force (VAF). In the three-day battle that followed, NVA forces entered the town and used the civilians for cover. This was an old tactic for the NVA, as it usually kept them from getting blasted by airstrikes and artillery.
It was on day two, as fighting got close to the temple, that some of the adults decided to flee. Led by a monk, a small group of townspeople, including nine-year-old Kim Phuc, ran into the open toward ARVN forces.
As bad luck would have it, an airstrike happened to be inbound just as Kim’s group broke into the open. The pilot of a strike aircraft, flying in at around 2,000 feet and 500 mph, had seconds to identify the group and decide what to do.He seems to have assumed that the group running toward his side’s lines were armed NVA, and so he dropped his ordnance on their position, dousing several ARVN soldiers with burning napalm and killing Kim Phuc’s cousins. Kim was ahead of the affected area, but some napalm did make contact with her back and left arm. It set her clothes on fire, and she stripped them off as she ran.
According to an account that Kim later gave in an interview, Phan Thi Kim Phuc ran naked down the road screaming: “Nóng quá, nóng quá” (“too hot, too hot”), until she reached a makeshift aid station where several photographers were stationed
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