Nguyen Van Nhung

Who was Nguyen Van Nhung?

Major Nguyễn Văn Nhung was an officer in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. After joining the French Army in 1944 during the colonial era of Vietnam, he soon met and became the aide-de-camp and bodyguard of Dương Văn Minh, and spent the rest of his career in this role as Minh rose up the ranks to become a general. Nhung and Minh later transferred to the French-backed Vietnamese National Army during the First Indochina War and he became an officer; the VNA then became the ARVN after the creation of the Republic of Vietnam. A soft-spoken man, Nhung was a professional military hitman who was reputed to have etched a line on his revolver for each of his killings, and ended the lives of 50 people during his career.

Nhung was best known for his role in the November 1963 coup d'état led by Minh that ousted President Ngô Đình Diệm from office. At the end of the coup, Nhung executed Diệm and his brother Ngô Đình Nhu, having shot Colonel Lê Quang Tung, the loyalist commander of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam Special Forces, into a grave at Tân Sơn Nhứt Air Base the day before. An investigation led by General Trần Văn Đôn, another coup plotter, determined that Nhung had repeatedly stabbed and shot the Ngô brothers while escorting them back to military headquarters after having arrested them. It was widely believed that Minh had ordered Nhung to execute the Ngô brothers. Following Nguyễn Khánh's successful January 1964 coup against Minh's military junta, Nhung died in mysterious circumstances, the only fatality in the regime change.