I hope I'm posting in the right sub. My father told me a story about when he was young (about 8 or so), and had just learned about atomic bombs. At dinner one night he asked his mother why the Americans didn't just drop atomic bombs to kill all the Viet-Cong to end the war. His mother got up, went to the living room, and came back with an issue of Time Magazine opened to a photograph of an American soldier smiling while holding a severed head in each hand. He said it made him sick to his stomach and forever changed his idea of war. I found a piece of art that uses the photo, but never the photo by itself, despite a lot of searching ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/artoridiocy/152702450/ ) If anyone knows where I can find this original photo, I would greatly appreciate it.
I've never heard of this photograph before. In fact, through all my readings on the Vietnam conflict, I've never heard of an image of an American soldier holding severed heads and smiling. Such a photograph would have been widely shared, in particular in the press, yet nothing came to mind.
Then it struck me: In the photograph that you're referring to, it's not an American soldier who is portrayed: It's a Cambodian soldier. The original photograph was taken by West German photographer Dieter Ludwig in November 1970 and first published in Time magazine on February 1st, 1971. It shows a Cambodian soldier holding the severed heads of soldiers belonging to the PAVN (People's Army of Vietnam, the North Vietnamese Army).
While the original article is behind a paywall on the Time website, I found a copy of the photograph as well as an accompanying article putting the photograph into context from the Michigan Daily (February 8, 1971).