Showing posts with label Kent State Incident. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kent State Incident. Show all posts
Monday, June 9, 2025
Wednesday, March 5, 2025
Sunday, March 5, 1775. The Boston Massacre.
In Boston, a young wigmaker's apprentice began a pestering British sentry about an allegedly unpaid barber bill, although the bill was paid in fact and the officer produced a receipt. Applying a universal rule about harassing people with guns being a bad idea, sort of like at Kent State many years later, a British soldier tired of the event and butted the kid was his musket.
A crowed soon gathered, somebody yelled "Fire", perhaps because Church Bells were ringing which was a fire alarm, and the troops fired their muskets, killing five. This is also reminiscent of Kent State.
The troops went on to be defended in a trial by John Adams.
Last edition:
Friday, March 3, 1775. A British ship.
Monday, November 18, 2024
I was a soldier once. . .
Student Alan Canfora waves a black flag before the Ohio National Guard shortly before they opened fire at Kent State, May 15, 1970.
and never as part of that did I ever imagine being used in the US to round up immigrants.
I have the strong feeling that if Trump attempts this, there's going to be a lot of men leaving the military, and a drop off of enlistment of epic proportions.
Tuesday, May 5, 2020
The Tragedy At Kent State
Yesterday, as we noted below, was the 50th anniversary of the Kent State, Ohio, incident.
The incident, to put it briefly, occured when students at Kent State University staged a protest over the invasion of Cambodia which had been announced by President Nixon on April 30 and which for the US commenced on May 1.
This blog isn't a day by day anything, but we do commemorate certain events, most frequently those of 100 years past, when they occur. Starting in 2018 we started picking up some fifty years past events mostly to mark the epicoal year of 1968. We've continued with that a bit, as that is in some ways the continuation of the original story.
I marked the 1970 invasion of Cambodia, an event that I can personally recall as I noted in a post about that, but I managed to almost miss the 50th anniversary of the Kent State Shootings. I marked it, but only with a post nothing it:
I nearly missed this somehow.
The point at which the Vietnam War took on a new, tragic, aspect, as a protest resulted in a unforeseen bloodshed.
This deserves a much better post than this, but unfortunately, it'll have to wait a bit.
The event was a huge one in the story of the war as it was the point where protests over the war resulted in bloodshed, something they had not up until then. As the anti war movement had developed some real radicals, it would have some violent incidents after Kent State, but the protest at Kent State itself was never intended to be that sort of confrontation.
It's easy to over explain what happened there, but the real oddity of it is that National Guardsmen, who were drawn from the local area and largely not reflected in the student body of Kent State, were deployed as a riot detail to the protest. That's not surprising but frankly, as a former National Guardsmen, that sort of duty is always dangerous for Guardsmen and the public, to a degree. Guardsmen are trained as soldiers, not as riot police, and the instinct of soldiers is to fire when confronted, no matter how well trained they may be. There are plenty of such incidents all around the globe that have occured when soldiers, even very well trained soldiers, fall back on their training in that fashion.
With that being the case, the shocking thing is that the Guardsmen had been issued ammunition. Normally this wouldn't be the case and I heavily doubt that even regular active duty soldiers who were deployed in similar roles in the 1950s and 1960s were issued ammunition. Likely even those men deployed to disperse the bonus marchers carried nothing more dangerous than than their sabers (they were cavalrymen) in that effort, with sabers making a pretty effective non lethal crowd control weapon in the hands of somebody who knows how to use their flats.
But at Kent State the Guardsmen were issued ammunition for their M1 Garands and at some point, they used it.
What happened remains extremely unclear. The protests had been running for several days as it was so it had grown tense. An effort was made to disperse the crowed and as part of that the Guardsmen advanced with bayonets fixed to their M1 Garands. Some students began throwing rocks and return throwing tear gas canisters. At some point the Guardsmen fired a 13 second volley, which is a long sustained volley. Sixtyseven shots were fired by the 77 Guardsmen, but slightly less than half fired at all.
That seems clear enough, but from there things deteriorate. Forensic examination of audiotape suggests that three shots were fired shortly before any others. Some witnesses claimed a sergeant opened fire with a sidearm first, but the FBI's expert stated that the first three shots were from a M1 Garand. An FBI informant inside the student body was revealed to be later armed and some have claimed that he fired the first shots, but this now seems discounted.
In the end, nine students were wounded and four killed. None of the killed was any older than 20 years old. Given the volume of shots, and the weapons used, it's amazing that only 13 people were hit, which has to lead to some speculation on whether the 29 Guardsmen who all fired actually aimed at anything or even attempted to, or even intentionally did not.
The entire matter was a national tragedy, to say the least. It put protests on the war on a new footing, even though the United States was already withdrawing from South Vietnam at the time, something not entirely evident to Americans given the recent news. It was also a local tragedy, however, which is rarely noted as like a lot of university towns, the residents of Kent Ohio, whose families had contributed those who were in the National Guard, never saw the incident in the same light.
The incident, to put it briefly, occured when students at Kent State University staged a protest over the invasion of Cambodia which had been announced by President Nixon on April 30 and which for the US commenced on May 1.
This blog isn't a day by day anything, but we do commemorate certain events, most frequently those of 100 years past, when they occur. Starting in 2018 we started picking up some fifty years past events mostly to mark the epicoal year of 1968. We've continued with that a bit, as that is in some ways the continuation of the original story.
I marked the 1970 invasion of Cambodia, an event that I can personally recall as I noted in a post about that, but I managed to almost miss the 50th anniversary of the Kent State Shootings. I marked it, but only with a post nothing it:
May 4, 1970. Kent State
I nearly missed this somehow.
The point at which the Vietnam War took on a new, tragic, aspect, as a protest resulted in a unforeseen bloodshed.
This deserves a much better post than this, but unfortunately, it'll have to wait a bit.
The event was a huge one in the story of the war as it was the point where protests over the war resulted in bloodshed, something they had not up until then. As the anti war movement had developed some real radicals, it would have some violent incidents after Kent State, but the protest at Kent State itself was never intended to be that sort of confrontation.
It's easy to over explain what happened there, but the real oddity of it is that National Guardsmen, who were drawn from the local area and largely not reflected in the student body of Kent State, were deployed as a riot detail to the protest. That's not surprising but frankly, as a former National Guardsmen, that sort of duty is always dangerous for Guardsmen and the public, to a degree. Guardsmen are trained as soldiers, not as riot police, and the instinct of soldiers is to fire when confronted, no matter how well trained they may be. There are plenty of such incidents all around the globe that have occured when soldiers, even very well trained soldiers, fall back on their training in that fashion.
With that being the case, the shocking thing is that the Guardsmen had been issued ammunition. Normally this wouldn't be the case and I heavily doubt that even regular active duty soldiers who were deployed in similar roles in the 1950s and 1960s were issued ammunition. Likely even those men deployed to disperse the bonus marchers carried nothing more dangerous than than their sabers (they were cavalrymen) in that effort, with sabers making a pretty effective non lethal crowd control weapon in the hands of somebody who knows how to use their flats.
But at Kent State the Guardsmen were issued ammunition for their M1 Garands and at some point, they used it.
What happened remains extremely unclear. The protests had been running for several days as it was so it had grown tense. An effort was made to disperse the crowed and as part of that the Guardsmen advanced with bayonets fixed to their M1 Garands. Some students began throwing rocks and return throwing tear gas canisters. At some point the Guardsmen fired a 13 second volley, which is a long sustained volley. Sixtyseven shots were fired by the 77 Guardsmen, but slightly less than half fired at all.
That seems clear enough, but from there things deteriorate. Forensic examination of audiotape suggests that three shots were fired shortly before any others. Some witnesses claimed a sergeant opened fire with a sidearm first, but the FBI's expert stated that the first three shots were from a M1 Garand. An FBI informant inside the student body was revealed to be later armed and some have claimed that he fired the first shots, but this now seems discounted.
In the end, nine students were wounded and four killed. None of the killed was any older than 20 years old. Given the volume of shots, and the weapons used, it's amazing that only 13 people were hit, which has to lead to some speculation on whether the 29 Guardsmen who all fired actually aimed at anything or even attempted to, or even intentionally did not.
The entire matter was a national tragedy, to say the least. It put protests on the war on a new footing, even though the United States was already withdrawing from South Vietnam at the time, something not entirely evident to Americans given the recent news. It was also a local tragedy, however, which is rarely noted as like a lot of university towns, the residents of Kent Ohio, whose families had contributed those who were in the National Guard, never saw the incident in the same light.
Monday, May 4, 2020
May 4, 1970. Kent State
I nearly missed this somehow.
The point at which the Vietnam War took on a new, tragic, aspect, as a protest resulted in a unforeseen bloodshed.
This deserves a much better post than this, but unfortunately, it'll have to wait a bit.
Friday, February 17, 2017
Gasp! The National Guard is not a police force.
I missed, thankfully, the original AP story on this one, so the rebuttal from the White House was the first news I had of the story. Here's how Time reported that:
The White House is pushing back against a report that it is considering a proposal to mobilize as many as 100,000 National Guard troops round up undocumented immigrants.
The Associated Press reported this morning that an 11-page document would call for the National Guard to be called up in 11 states, including some not along the Mexican border, to round up undocumented immigrants.
The memo was written by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general, according to the AP, and would give governors in those states final say on whether to participate.
"That is 100% not true," White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters. "It is false. It is irresponsible to be saying this. ... There is no effort at all to round up, to utilize the National Guard to round up illegal immigrants."
Spicer would not say whether this idea was ever floated somewhere within the Administration.
As a total initial aside, in my line of work I deal with illegal aliens from time to time, and they always refer to themselves, in my experience, as "illegal". This whole "undocumented alien" line is a bunch 1984s double talk. They're illegal aliens. They're also human beings, and usually really darned hard working ones. Whatever a person thinks of this situation one way or another, coming up with weird terms to define them is, well, silly.
Anyhow, I'm glad I didn't see the original report, as using the National Guard in this role, assuming that's even legal (and I'm not at all sure it would be) would be insane. My prediction is that it would go very poorly with the Guard on top of it, which has fought for well over a century not to be viewed as some sort of police force. They're soldiers, not police.
Using soldiers as police (assuming its legal, and I'm not too sure it is) is a hideous idea. When I was a Guardsman myself I was always impressed by that. I joined the Guard nine years after the Kent State disaster and what always struck me about that is that I wasn't surprised they'd shot the protestors. Solders aren't trained towards restraint, like policemen are. That doesn't mean I think they should have shot. Rather, if you train all the time towards shooting an opposing force, your training for not shooting is pretty thin.
Frankly, I think that if the Administration did try to use the Guard in this fashion it'd spark widespread resistance to this in the Guard and at the State level. Guardsmen are state troops until Federalized and Governors have not been shy in the past about resisting deployments they didn't approve of. That was the case on a widespread level during the Spanish American War and it sparked a split in some states which has lasted until the present day in which age old units became two units, one a Federally recognized National Guard and another a state militia recognized only on the state level. That split was so strong that it lasted even throughout World War One and Two and into the present day in some places.
The Guard, moreover, is a pretty significant part of the overall defense picture. Wars since September 11, 2001, have really taxed it as many units have repeatedly been called into service. Using them in this fashion would be a terrible idea and likely would lead to pretty rapid unit attrition.
Anyhow, hopefully whatever was going on here goes away quickly.
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