Tom Grace, an eyewitness of a shooting that took place at the campus of Kent State University, described his emotions and feelings related to this event. During the student demonstration against the U.S. intervention in Cambodia, the National Guardsmen came and started to make the students leave by bayonets, tear-gas, stones, and shooting. Four students were killed during this event, nine were wounded, and many received a psychologically traumatic experience.
When the National Guardsmen came to the university, Grace felt that the presence of these armed people at the campus was wrong and hostile. He thought that it was them who should leave the university, and not the students who lived and studied there. After the trial, the officers were not punished for killing innocent people, but Grace supposed that some of them feel guilty for that.
Grace’s account of events allows one to see the event with the eyes of a person who was there. It could serve as evidence during the trial against the officers who shot the students. As for the inscription of the memorial, Grace’s variant “On May 4, 1970, units of the Ohio National Guard Company H. 107th Armored Cavalry (Troop G) and Company A, 145th Infantry Regiment shot and killed four student protesters and wounded nine others during a demonstration against the U.S. invasion of Cambodia” describes the event as it is (Grace, 1970). However, it perhaps does not allow to feel the horror that felt these students and the injustice of their shooting. I would suggest an inscription: “Here four students who wanted to live in a peaceful country were killed by the soldiers of this country. May 4, 1970”. It can make the reader remember the student’s ideas for which they had to die and to realize that the soldiers that were supposed to protect the people shot them instead.
Work Cited
Grace, Tom. The Shooting at Kent State, 1970.