Remembering May 4: A different perspective
Former Ohio National Guardsman Dan Rayle narrowly escaped infamy as one of the 29 guardsmen who shot and fatally wounded four Kent State students on May 4, 1970.
The Ohio National Guard drafted Rayle in 1965, where he served for six years. In late-April to early-May 1970, he was deployed to assist law enforcement at The Ohio State University control students whose protests were violently escalating.
Aggressive students and large police presence both contributed to the rising violence, according to an article published in The Lantern, OSU’s student-run newspaper.
“[There was] a crowd of maybe a thousand people, maybe 25 or 30 were actually doing the rioting, but the rest of them were bystanders carrying signs and stuff, but they weren’t trying to do any harm,” Rayle said. “There was just a handful of them setting things on fire, breaking windows and trying to destroy buildings.”
Rayle said being a guardsman at OSU was not an easy or safe task.
“A bunch of kids would be out there rioting, they’d grab all these rocks and then they would run up to the front and go through the line and get within four or five foot of you and start throwing them,” Rayle said.
Rioters at OSU attempted to injure the National Guard in multiple ways, including throwing marshmallows filled with razor blades at them, Rayle said. The students melted marshmallows to put razors in and then froze them with CO2 fire extinguishers, making them easier to throw.
“The only protection we got was the second we were actually out on the line, they brought winter field jackets … so when we got hit with the rocks and the razor blades and the glass, [There was] a lot less chance of injuring you,” Rayle said.
Rayle said he believes students have the right to protest, but the students at OSU went too far.
“Rioting is one thing, but when you start burning down buildings, setting fires, breaking out windows, destroying property, no, there’s no reason for that,” Rayle said. “All that does is make it worse — not better.”
After multiple days at OSU, Rayle’s platoon packed up and began their journey to Kent State with intentions of joining the guardsmen already deployed there.
On May 4, Kent State students protested President Richard Nixon’s decision to invade Cambodia during the Vietnam War, said Lori Boes, May 4 Visitors Center assistant director.
Rayle never made it to Kent State though.
“They were sending us to back them up at Kent State and then the students got shot and that pretty well ended the riots,” Rayle said. “They called us — we were about halfway there — [and] they sent us back to Ohio State.”
Guardsmen at Kent State fired 67 shots in 13 seconds, injuring nine and killing four — two of which weren’t participating in the protests, according to Ohio History Central.
“This was a First Amendment,” Boes said. “Students were protesting. It’s protected under the first amendment. And they were shot for doing that.”
Rayle said he was fortunate because neither the students or national guard at OSU got severely injured, and he never used his gun.
“It was a scary moment because you didn’t want to kill anybody, you didn’t want to shoot anybody, but you didn’t want to get hurt yourself either,” he said.
