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Campus "Unrest" demonstrations and consequences, 1970-1971

1970-05-24 Akron Beacon Journal Article: Kent State: The Search For Understanding Page 4

A 20 Akron Beacon Journal Sunday, May 24, 1970
SPECIAL KENT STATE SECTION

Guard Had No 'Meaningful' Riot Training 

Most Units Also Are Ill-Equipped

I bled at Bunker Hill and froze at Valley Forge. 
I rode with Washington across the Icy Delaware
I am defender of our nation 
Now and forever, I am the Guard 
- Ballad of the National Guard 

Patriotism is alive - and living in the National Guard...

A motto on a miniature billboard in the office of Maj. Gen. Sylvester T. Del. Corso. adjutant General of the Ohio National Guard. 

Older than the Republic itself, laden with tradition, the National Guard is a remarkable institution: A citizens army a militia of townspeople ready to be called to arms in defense of the nation. 
Made up of people from all walks of life - teachers, milkmen, mechanics, farmers, insurance men - the Guard could exist only in a democracy. No institution, not the jury system, mass education, nor the right to worship, is more a part of America.
But despite it's tradition, the Guard as it was after the black riots in Detroit and Newark in 1967, is under severe criticism . 

On a brilliant Spring afternoon 20 days ago, a small group of Ohio National Guardsmen, hot, tired, angry and afraid, opened fire on demonstrators at Kent State University and killed four young students .
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D., Mass) said that the killings were the home front equivalent of the My Lai massacre. He asked: "Who of us, seeing American troops in Ohio fire wildly into a crowd of students, does not also see My Lai with its defenseless Vietnamese civilians cut down by American troops?"
Sen. Stephen M. Young (D., Ohio) a long time Guard critic, says that the Guardsmen at Kent State University were "trigger happy" and that the four students were "murdered"
He says that the Guard officer who "held his arm aloft and then pulled it down" as a signal to fire "should be investigated" for murder - as should the two senior Guard commanders, Maj Gen. Sylvester T. Del Corso, the adjutant general and Brig. Gen. Robert Canterbury, assistant adjutant general. 
Vice President Spiro T. Agnew says that the Guardsmen may be guilty of murder, although the Vice President, who like Kennedy and Young, speaks with no detailed information on what occurred, adds "not first degree murder."
Agnew says "there was no premeditation but apparently an overaction in the threat of danger. "

America's students called the killings at Kent State a massacre. 
Whether it was a massacre or murder or whether - as many Guardsmen later claimed - there was no choice but to fire is the subject of federal and state investigations. 
The team of Beacon Journal and other Knight Newspapers reporters examining the incident found evidence to support these conclusions about the Guard:

GOV, JAMES A. Rhodes, who has called out the Guard at least 40 times in the last two years, was responsible for the order that the Guard was to break up any assembly at Kent, peaceful or otherwise. 

GEN, DEL CORSO champions the special Ohio Guard rule allow Guardsmen to carry live rounds in the weapons. 

GEN. CANTERBURY exercised no control over the men on the hill under his command - the men who eventually fired. 

THE GUARD, despite increased training in the last three years, still has no effective anti riot equipment and no meaningful anti riot training. Its equipment was limited to antiquated tear gas canisters and the M1 - a killer weapon with tremendous velocity and range. 

SOME GUARDSMEN aimed shots at students or groups of students. Most fired wildly as if by impulse or reflex.. 

THE GUARD in firing at the students violated its regulations which stress "restraint" and "minimum application of force"

IN ESCALATING from tear gas to bullets, the Guardsmen ignored several suggested intermediate steps which federal manuals say must be used before soldiers fire their weapons. 

GUARD OFFICERS failed to inform students, faculty or the Kent administration that they had live ammunition in their weapons, although a 1968 statement by Del Corso said this was to be done as part of crowd control strategy. 

THE GUARDSMEN violated the most important regulation of all : Avoid Death. 

So then these questions: Does the nation really oppose bloodshed in quelling disorder? If it does, why is the Guard permitted to use equipment and tactics that escalate the risk of tragedy?

Like Guard units throughout the country, the Ohio National Guard has a rich, colorful, proud history. 
The Ohio militia served in the war in 1812 and in 1813 under Gen William Henry Harrison, defeated the British and Indians at the battle of Fallen Timbers, forever ending British encroachment in the Northwest Territory. 
(The militia units took the name National Guard in the early 1800s to honor revolutionary war hero Marquis De LaFayette of France and his celebrated "Garde Nationale De Paris")
The Ohio Guard sent 8,000 men to the Mexican War, and more than 350.000 Ohio men, may of them militiamen, served in the Civil War, and claimed the honor of firing the first Union artillery after the fall of Fort Summer. 
It provided more than 100 companies during the Spanish-American War, and sent units to the Mexican border with Gen John H. Pershing in 1916. 
In World War I, the 37th (Buckeye) Division of the Ohio National Guard, according to a Guard history, was rated on of the five best American divisions by no less an authority than the German general staff and in World War II, the 37th Division of the Ohio Guard fought throughout the South Pacific . Of 17 Medal of Honor awarded to National Guardsmen seven went to Ohio Guardsmen. 

Thoroughly emmeshed in  the politics and life of the State of Ohio, the Ohio Guard has a host of battle streamers, the names calling forth the history of American warfare and of the country itself: Buena Vista, Antietam, Shiloh, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Puerto Rico, Ypres-Lys, Aisne Marne, St Mikiel, Northern Solomons, Luzon, Guadacanal, Leyte. It is by all indicators a good outfit as the Army phrase goes. 
Yet, in that brief awful moment at Kent State this storied history the campaign, the campfires, the battle 

THE GUARD IS ON THE MOVE AT KSU CAMPUS

streamers meant nothing. This proud past could not change the fact that the Ohio Guard like almost all Guard units is ill equipped and ill trained either for combat or the quelling of social disorder. 
To be sure, the Ohio Guard has had extensive experience in dealing with disorders. It was deployed in Cleveland during the Hough riots in 1966 and twice in Cleveland in 1968- once following the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, and again after the shootout between policemen and blacks that led the to conviction of Ahmed Evans. It has also seen riot duty in Akron, Youngstown, Cincinnati, and Toledo Del Corso says: " All these units have had riot duty experience."

But critics of the Guard - and some Guardsmen themselves - argue that the Guard is a mainly military force. 

"History meant nothing after that moment."

designed to supplement the regular Army but is mainly used for non-military crises. 
"We get the same basic training thee guys get who go to Vietnam" said Guardsman Pete Hamo, "But once you're out of basic you're only used to help the police when they an't handle a local situation. 
There are some 500,000 Americans in Guard units at a cost of $1 billion to U.S. taxpayers. There were, perhaps political considerations in the decision not to activate Guardsmen to help fill growing Army manpower needs in the expanding Vietnam War. Bit Defense Department officials recognized it would require vast amounts of money and time to hone Guard units for combat.
A Pentagon spokesman says there is no doubt within Pentagon circles that the Ohio Guardsmen did not perform at a level of the active Army. 
Full time soldier, a Pentagon colonel says would have carried rounds in their ammunition pouches not their weapons and would have loaded - and fire if it came to that - only at the command of an officer. This would have cause the soldiers to think before they fired, he says, precluding instinctive firing. 

The 60 or so Guardsmen on Kent's "Blanket Hill" once a favorite student necking spot, were not, for the large part, soldiers at all, but civilians - farmers, public relations men, a truck driver, a milk man, factory workers, businessmen. 
They were equipped with World war II and Korea vintage rifles - M1s - which were designed for combat not riot control and which have an immense power ( a maximum range of 3,450 yards) a power which most Guardsmen simply do not comprehend. 
For their work, foot soldiers earn $12,80 a say. At Kent Guard officials say that 46 of them were injured three of them requiring hospitalization. Two had teeth knocked out. 
IN the days after the shooting, Guardsmen would ritualistically walk back to the shooting site, and many would touch the bullet holes in a tree and a steel sculpture with their fingers. 
"God those damn things are powerful," a Guardsmen said, touching a bullet hole that had plowed through an 18 inch thick tree. 
Unlike most major police departments, the Guardsmen had no modern weapons for riot control - plastic face visors for their helmets, baseball type gas grenades which cannot easily be thrown back, protective vests, gas dispensers which lay down a blanket of gas that incapacitates anyone within a block or more. 
A Guard chaplain, Capt. John Simons, of the 107th Arm

TEAR GAS ALL OVER AS GUARD MOVES DEMONSTRATORS 

ored Cavalry regiment, says simply of the M-1s and the Guard's antiquated gas canisters which students simply tossed back: "There's gas and bullets and nothing in between,"
"The killings never should have happened says Simons, who married into an Army family and who has what mounts to almost a love for the Guard. 
Recalling the Guard sweep of "Blanket Hill" when students pitched gas canisters back at the Guardsmen, Guard Lgt. Michael Delany says. "It was like a game - like a serious game of Frisbee."

The Guardsmen on the hill had  no training in walking long distances in gas masks. They were hot, tired and in some cases afraid that students might charge them and take their rifles away. Says Guardsman Paul Navjoks, of Company A, 145th Infantry:
"They were getting closer and closer with those rocks and we were surrounded If we got to hand to hand combat they would have overtaken us and taken our bayonets and started sticking us with our bayonts."
Even Gen . Canterbury a graduate of the Army's Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kan says; "The alternative was to be overrun"

Canterbury who was with the Guardsmen on the hill thought his men were in grave danger. " I could have been killed out there," he said.

On top of "Blanket Hill" the Guardsmen could not see well in their gas masks. One, Sgt. Dale Antram of company A, was forced, as were some other Guardsmen to remove his glasses when he put on his gas mask. He says he could not see far enough to tell whether he was in danger from rock throwing students. 
Many of the Guardsmen are from towns such as Ravenna ]20 miles east of Akron and Orville and Wooster 25 miles to the southwest. 
Indeed, all of G Troop of the 107th Armored Cavalry Regiment - whose members were responsible for most of the firing are from Ravenna.
A Guard officer says "If you had to categorize them, the 107th would be composed of men from a rural background."

Many of the Guardsmen were strongly critical of the student demonstrations. Says 1st Lt. Roy W. Dew of G Troop of the 107th: " I feel it had to come to an end sometime. These kids just don't understand. They're 19-20-21 year old kids and they just want to run the country."
Capt. Raymond J. Srp of Cleveland commander of G Troop of the 107th laments "People don't want to be told. They want to talk" 
Certainly the Guardsmen were vexed at being called to duty - fist to ride shotgun on trucks because of a wildcat [??] strike and then to guard Kent State University. 
Like everyone else, the Guardsmen wanted to be home with their families but this is often not possible for Ohio Guardsmen. Gov. Rhodes has called out the Guard for [?] prison outbreaks, threatening student disturbances [?] disorders. Few Guard units in other states are called with the frequency of the Ohio Guard. One Guardsmen says "Everytime someone sneezes, the call out the Guard. 
And Gen. Del Corso, in a newspaper interview in September, 1968 said he had seen more action in Ohio in the Simmer of 1968 than he had seen since World War II.

For more than two years now, the Ohio Guard has been under the command of Gen. Del Corse. a conservative man whose highest rank in the active Army was colonel. After Rhodes named him Adjutant General in April 1968, he was jumped two ranks when Congress approved his promotion to major general. 
Inexplicably, the clock in Del Corso's office in Columbus a gigantic timepiece that tells both civilian and military time - is exactly four hours fast to the minute. 
De Corso speaks softly. In a voice you sometimes have to strain to hear, he admits to being "an advocate of doing the job, of not being permissive." meaning that he is an advocate of law and order and an ardent foe of Communism, which he claims is at the root of student and black militancy.
In July 1968 when the Guard was called to Cleveland following the much disputed shoot out between black militants and Cleveland police, Del Corso said that Cleveland Mayor Carl Stokes had "surrendered to black revolutionaries" by turning the peace keeping detail over to moderate black leaders. He added that the "permissive attitude of our national administration"  was a major factor for Negro riots. 

"Everytime somebody sneezes they call out the Guard"

and that he sensed a "plot" in black riots "to spread destruction (and) disrupt the government."

When President Nixon came into office, Del Corso sensed a change from the permissiveness he believed characterized the Johnson administration.
And at the time of the anti war demonstrations last November, Del Corso at his own expense, distributed to Ohio Guardsmen, thousands of copies of a letter which they could sign and send to the White House in support of the Vietnam war.
Most importantly, it is Del Corso who has strongly advocated the policy, rare among military units and directly contrary to federal Army practices, that Ohio Guardsmen go into riot situations carrying loaded weapons. 
In April 1968 shortly after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther Kind, Del Corso explained the rules like this: "If Guardsmen are fired on, they are to identify where the fire is from and return individually aimed shots to kill if necessary."
It was this policy, as much as the firing itself, which has drawn criticism of the Guard. 

GEN. Canterbury says that the 17 or so Guardsmen who fired (the number may be higher) did so only because "it was like their lives as opposed to the rioters." Del Corso adds: "From what I see certainly must have been self defense or a survival thing that triggered this incident. "
Canterbury and Del Croso are correct, of course , when they say that the Ohio Guardsmen have the right, according to Guard regulations to fire if they believe their lives are in danger, Ohio Guard regulations say :"I will fire when required to save y life or when returning fire."
Yet, even protected by that regulation, the Ohio Guardsmen violated a number of other rules when they fired including the policy that Del Corso laid down in April 1968, 
For even if there was a sniper, as the Guard has sometimes claimed, the Guard fired indiscriminately into the student. Some Guardsmen, Knight Newspapers learned, fired aimed shots at students, or at least groups of students. But many simply fired wildly, as if by impulse or reflex. 

Here is what Ohio Guard regulations say in regard to the engagement of snipers:
"On coming under fire, the patrol takes cover immediately. No fire is returned unless the sniper's location is definitely pointed , in which case single, aimed shots are fired as necessary."
At another point, the regulations say, "The restoration of law and order n an Ohio city is not exactly a combat situation, but rather it is a situation wherein our guideline is a minimum application of force consistent with our objective."
The regulations also say: "... the keynote of all.. operations aimed at the curtailment of civil disorder is restraint," The words "..... minimum application of force consistent with our objective "and"... restraint.... "are italicized

According to Maj. Gen. Winston P. Wilson Jr., head of the National Guard Bureau in Washington, the Ohio regulations say that "rifles will be carried with a round in the chamber" when "all other things fail."
Yet, the Ohio Guardsmen carried rounds in their chambers when they initially moved out to disperse the crowd - this at a time when they had tried no "Other things" at all except bullhorn shouted orders to disperse and firing of tear gas. 
Additionally, according to company commanders in the Guard, it has been a standard operating procedure - SOP in military jargon - for Ohio Guardsmen to carry one clip of eight bullets in their weapons and to attach a second clip to the fronts of their uniforms. 
They do this, says Capt. Ronald Snyder, a commander of Company C, of the 45th Infantry, to provide a "deterrent" to crowds they want to disperse. In this way, Snyder says, citizens will know the Guard has live ammunition. 
Yet, it appears that none of the Guardsmen who moved out in the skirmish line against Kent Students has a clip attached to their tunics. 
At no time on Monday, May 4, the day of  the shooting, did the Guard officers inform students, faculty or the Kent administration that they had live ammunition. 

The students did not know the Guard had live ammunition. Many believed the soldiers were firing blanks. 
Ron Steel, 18, a Kent freshman, said : "I just stood there 

See NO EVIDENCE, Page A-21

Saving...

A 20 Akron Beacon Journal Sunday, May 24, 1970 SPECIAL KENT STATE SECTION Guard Had No 'Meaningful' Riot Training Most Units Also Are Ill-Equipped I bled at Bunker Hill and froze at Valley Forge. I rode with Washington across the Icy Delaware I am defender of our nation Now and forever, I am the Guard - Ballad of the National Guard Patriotism is alive - and living in the National Guard... A motto on a miniature billboard in the office of Maj. Gen. Sylvester T. Del. Corso. adjutant General of the Ohio National Guard. Older than the Republic itself, laden with tradition, the National Guard is a remarkable institution: A citizens army a militia of townspeople ready to be called to arms in defense of the nation. Made up of people from all walks of life - teachers, milkmen, mechanics, farmers, insurance men - the Guard could exist only in a democracy. No institution, not the jury system, mass education, nor the right to worship, is more a part of America. But despite it's tradition, the Guard as it was after the black riots in Detroit and Newark in 1967, is under severe criticism . On a brilliant Spring afternoon 20 days ago, a small group of Ohio National Guardsmen, hot, tired, angry and afraid, opened fire on demonstrators at Kent State University and killed four young students . Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D., Mass) said that the killings were the home front equivalent of the My Lai massacre. He asked: "Who of us, seeing American troops in Ohio fire wildly into a crowd of students, does not also see My Lai with its defenseless Vietnamese civilians cut down by American troops?" Sen. Stephen M. Young (D., Ohio) a long time Guard critic, says that the Guardsmen at Kent State University were "trigger happy" and that the four students were "murdered" He says that the Guard officer who "held his arm aloft and then pulled it down" as a signal to fire "should be investigated" for murder - as should the two senior Guard commanders, Maj Gen. Sylvester T. Del Corso, the adjutant general and Brig. Gen. Robert Canterbury, assistant adjutant general. Vice President Spiro T. Agnew says that the Guardsmen may be guilty of murder, although the Vice President, who like Kennedy and Young, speaks with no detailed information on what occurred, adds "not first degree murder." Agnew says "there was no premeditation but apparently an overaction in the threat of danger. " America's students called the killings at Kent State a massacre. Whether it was a massacre or murder or whether - as many Guardsmen later claimed - there was no choice but to fire is the subject of federal and state investigations. The team of Beacon Journal and other Knight Newspapers reporters examining the incident found evidence to support these conclusions about the Guard: GOV, JAMES A. Rhodes, who has called out the Guard at least 40 times in the last two years, was responsible for the order that the Guard was to break up any assembly at Kent, peaceful or otherwise. GEN, DEL CORSO champions the special Ohio Guard rule allow Guardsmen to carry live rounds in the weapons. GEN. CANTERBURY exercised no control over the men on the hill under his command - the men who eventually fired. THE GUARD, despite increased training in the last three years, still has no effective anti riot equipment and no meaningful anti riot training. Its equipment was limited to antiquated tear gas canisters and the M1 - a killer weapon with tremendous velocity and range. SOME GUARDSMEN aimed shots at students or groups of students. Most fired wildly as if by impulse or reflex.. THE GUARD in firing at the students violated its regulations which stress "restraint" and "minimum application of force" IN ESCALATING from tear gas to bullets, the Guardsmen ignored several suggested intermediate steps which federal manuals say must be used before soldiers fire their weapons. GUARD OFFICERS failed to inform students, faculty or the Kent administration that they had live ammunition in their weapons, although a 1968 statement by Del Corso said this was to be done as part of crowd control strategy. THE GUARDSMEN violated the most important regulation of all : Avoid Death. So then these questions: Does the nation really oppose bloodshed in quelling disorder? If it does, why is the Guard permitted to use equipment and tactics that escalate the risk of tragedy? Like Guard units throughout the country, the Ohio National Guard has a rich, colorful, proud history. The Ohio militia served in the war in 1812 and in 1813 under Gen William Henry Harrison, defeated the British and Indians at the battle of Fallen Timbers, forever ending British encroachment in the Northwest Territory. (The militia units took the name National Guard in the early 1800s to honor revolutionary war hero Marquis De LaFayette of France and his celebrated "Garde Nationale De Paris") The Ohio Guard sent 8,000 men to the Mexican War, and more than 350.000 Ohio men, may of them militiamen, served in the Civil War, and claimed the honor of firing the first Union artillery after the fall of Fort Summer. It provided more than 100 companies during the Spanish-American War, and sent units to the Mexican border with Gen John H. Pershing in 1916. In World War I, the 37th (Buckeye) Division of the Ohio National Guard, according to a Guard history, was rated on of the five best American divisions by no less an authority than the German general staff and in World War II, the 37th Division of the Ohio Guard fought throughout the South Pacific . Of 17 Medal of Honor awarded to National Guardsmen seven went to Ohio Guardsmen. Thoroughly emmeshed in the politics and life of the State of Ohio, the Ohio Guard has a host of battle streamers, the names calling forth the history of American warfare and of the country itself: Buena Vista, Antietam, Shiloh, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Puerto Rico, Ypres-Lys, Aisne Marne, St Mikiel, Northern Solomons, Luzon, Guadacanal, Leyte. It is by all indicators a good outfit as the Army phrase goes. Yet, in that brief awful moment at Kent State this storied history the campaign, the campfires, the battle THE GUARD IS ON THE MOVE AT KSU CAMPUS streamers meant nothing. This proud past could not change the fact that the Ohio Guard like almost all Guard units is ill equipped and ill trained either for combat or the quelling of social disorder. To be sure, the Ohio Guard has had extensive experience in dealing with disorders. It was deployed in Cleveland during the Hough riots in 1966 and twice in Cleveland in 1968- once following the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, and again after the shootout between policemen and blacks that led the to conviction of Ahmed Evans. It has also seen riot duty in Akron, Youngstown, Cincinnati, and Toledo Del Corso says: " All these units have had riot duty experience." But critics of the Guard - and some Guardsmen themselves - argue that the Guard is a mainly military force. "History meant nothing after that moment." designed to supplement the regular Army but is mainly used for non-military crises. "We get the same basic training thee guys get who go to Vietnam" said Guardsman Pete Hamo, "But once you're out of basic you're only used to help the police when they an't handle a local situation. There are some 500,000 Americans in Guard units at a cost of $1 billion to U.S. taxpayers. There were, perhaps political considerations in the decision not to activate Guardsmen to help fill growing Army manpower needs in the expanding Vietnam War. Bit Defense Department officials recognized it would require vast amounts of money and time to hone Guard units for combat. A Pentagon spokesman says there is no doubt within Pentagon circles that the Ohio Guardsmen did not perform at a level of the active Army. Full time soldier, a Pentagon colonel says would have carried rounds in their ammunition pouches not their weapons and would have loaded - and fire if it came to that - only at the command of an officer. This would have cause the soldiers to think before they fired, he says, precluding instinctive firing. The 60 or so Guardsmen on Kent's "Blanket Hill" once a favorite student necking spot, were not, for the large part, soldiers at all, but civilians - farmers, public relations men, a truck driver, a milk man, factory workers, businessmen. They were equipped with World war II and Korea vintage rifles - M1s - which were designed for combat not riot control and which have an immense power ( a maximum range of 3,450 yards) a power which most Guardsmen simply do not comprehend. For their work, foot soldiers earn $12,80 a say. At Kent Guard officials say that 46 of them were injured three of them requiring hospitalization. Two had teeth knocked out. IN the days after the shooting, Guardsmen would ritualistically walk back to the shooting site, and many would touch the bullet holes in a tree and a steel sculpture with their fingers. "God those damn things are powerful," a Guardsmen said, touching a bullet hole that had plowed through an 18 inch thick tree. Unlike most major police departments, the Guardsmen had no modern weapons for riot control - plastic face visors for their helmets, baseball type gas grenades which cannot easily be thrown back, protective vests, gas dispensers which lay down a blanket of gas that incapacitates anyone within a block or more. A Guard chaplain, Capt. John Simons, of the 107th Arm TEAR GAS ALL OVER AS GUARD MOVES DEMONSTRATORS ored Cavalry regiment, says simply of the M-1s and the Guard's antiquated gas canisters which students simply tossed back: "There's gas and bullets and nothing in between," "The killings never should have happened says Simons, who married into an Army family and who has what mounts to almost a love for the Guard. Recalling the Guard sweep of "Blanket Hill" when students pitched gas canisters back at the Guardsmen, Guard Lgt. Michael Delany says. "It was like a game - like a serious game of Frisbee." The Guardsmen on the hill had no training in walking long distances in gas masks. They were hot, tired and in some cases afraid that students might charge them and take their rifles away. Says Guardsman Paul Navjoks, of Company A, 145th Infantry: "They were getting closer and closer with those rocks and we were surrounded If we got to hand to hand combat they would have overtaken us and taken our bayonets and started sticking us with our bayonts." Even Gen . Canterbury a graduate of the Army's Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kan says; "The alternative was to be overrun" Canterbury who was with the Guardsmen on the hill thought his men were in grave danger. " I could have been killed out there," he said. On top of "Blanket Hill" the Guardsmen could not see well in their gas masks. One, Sgt. Dale Antram of company A, was forced, as were some other Guardsmen to remove his glasses when he put on his gas mask. He says he could not see far enough to tell whether he was in danger from rock throwing students. Many of the Guardsmen are from towns such as Ravenna ]20 miles east of Akron and Orville and Wooster 25 miles to the southwest. Indeed, all of G Troop of the 107th Armored Cavalry Regiment - whose members were responsible for most of the firing are from Ravenna. A Guard officer says "If you had to categorize them, the 107th would be composed of men from a rural background." Many of the Guardsmen were strongly critical of the student demonstrations. Says 1st Lt. Roy W. Dew of G Troop of the 107th: " I feel it had to come to an end sometime. These kids just don't understand. They're 19-20-21 year old kids and they just want to run the country." Capt. Raymond J. Srp of Cleveland commander of G Troop of the 107th laments "People don't want to be told. They want to talk" Certainly the Guardsmen were vexed at being called to duty - fist to ride shotgun on trucks because of a wildcat [??] strike and then to guard Kent State University. Like everyone else, the Guardsmen wanted to be home with their families but this is often not possible for Ohio Guardsmen. Gov. Rhodes has called out the Guard for [?] prison outbreaks, threatening student disturbances [?] disorders. Few Guard units in other states are called with the frequency of the Ohio Guard. One Guardsmen says "Everytime someone sneezes, the call out the Guard. And Gen. Del Corso, in a newspaper interview in September, 1968 said he had seen more action in Ohio in the Simmer of 1968 than he had seen since World War II. For more than two years now, the Ohio Guard has been under the command of Gen. Del Corse. a conservative man whose highest rank in the active Army was colonel. After Rhodes named him Adjutant General in April 1968, he was jumped two ranks when Congress approved his promotion to major general. Inexplicably, the clock in Del Corso's office in Columbus a gigantic timepiece that tells both civilian and military time - is exactly four hours fast to the minute. De Corso speaks softly. In a voice you sometimes have to strain to hear, he admits to being "an advocate of doing the job, of not being permissive." meaning that he is an advocate of law and order and an ardent foe of Communism, which he claims is at the root of student and black militancy. In July 1968 when the Guard was called to Cleveland following the much disputed shoot out between black militants and Cleveland police, Del Corso said that Cleveland Mayor Carl Stokes had "surrendered to black revolutionaries" by turning the peace keeping detail over to moderate black leaders. He added that the "permissive attitude of our national administration" was a major factor for Negro riots. "Everytime somebody sneezes they call out the Guard" and that he sensed a "plot" in black riots "to spread destruction (and) disrupt the government." When President Nixon came into office, Del Corso sensed a change from the permissiveness he believed characterized the Johnson administration. And at the time of the anti war demonstrations last November, Del Corso at his own expense, distributed to Ohio Guardsmen, thousands of copies of a letter which they could sign and send to the White House in support of the Vietnam war. Most importantly, it is Del Corso who has strongly advocated the policy, rare among military units and directly contrary to federal Army practices, that Ohio Guardsmen go into riot situations carrying loaded weapons. In April 1968 shortly after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther Kind, Del Corso explained the rules like this: "If Guardsmen are fired on, they are to identify where the fire is from and return individually aimed shots to kill if necessary." It was this policy, as much as the firing itself, which has drawn criticism of the Guard. GEN. Canterbury says that the 17 or so Guardsmen who fired (the number may be higher) did so only because "it was like their lives as opposed to the rioters." Del Corso adds: "From what I see certainly must have been self defense or a survival thing that triggered this incident. " Canterbury and Del Croso are correct, of course , when they say that the Ohio Guardsmen have the right, according to Guard regulations to fire if they believe their lives are in danger, Ohio Guard regulations say :"I will fire when required to save y life or when returning fire." Yet, even protected by that regulation, the Ohio Guardsmen violated a number of other rules when they fired including the policy that Del Corso laid down in April 1968, For even if there was a sniper, as the Guard has sometimes claimed, the Guard fired indiscriminately into the student. Some Guardsmen, Knight Newspapers learned, fired aimed shots at students, or at least groups of students. But many simply fired wildly, as if by impulse or reflex. Here is what Ohio Guard regulations say in regard to the engagement of snipers: "On coming under fire, the patrol takes cover immediately. No fire is returned unless the sniper's location is definitely pointed , in which case single, aimed shots are fired as necessary." At another point, the regulations say, "The restoration of law and order n an Ohio city is not exactly a combat situation, but rather it is a situation wherein our guideline is a minimum application of force consistent with our objective." The regulations also say: "... the keynote of all.. operations aimed at the curtailment of civil disorder is restraint," The words "..... minimum application of force consistent with our objective "and"... restraint.... "are italicized According to Maj. Gen. Winston P. Wilson Jr., head of the National Guard Bureau in Washington, the Ohio regulations say that "rifles will be carried with a round in the chamber" when "all other things fail." Yet, the Ohio Guardsmen carried rounds in their chambers when they initially moved out to disperse the crowd - this at a time when they had tried no "Other things" at all except bullhorn shouted orders to disperse and firing of tear gas. Additionally, according to company commanders in the Guard, it has been a standard operating procedure - SOP in military jargon - for Ohio Guardsmen to carry one clip of eight bullets in their weapons and to attach a second clip to the fronts of their uniforms. They do this, says Capt. Ronald Snyder, a commander of Company C, of the 45th Infantry, to provide a "deterrent" to crowds they want to disperse. In this way, Snyder says, citizens will know the Guard has live ammunition. Yet, it appears that none of the Guardsmen who moved out in the skirmish line against Kent Students has a clip attached to their tunics. At no time on Monday, May 4, the day of the shooting, did the Guard officers inform students, faculty or the Kent administration that they had live ammunition. The students did not know the Guard had live ammunition. Many believed the soldiers were firing blanks. Ron Steel, 18, a Kent freshman, said : "I just stood there See NO EVIDENCE, Page A-21