A crowd of young men in front of a formation of soldiers ready for battle. A quivering maiden hand inserts a wildflower into the barrel of a rifle aimed at her. Calls are heard from the crowd to end the madness. Shot. The flower, torn apart by a bullet, scatters with a cloud of smoke. Another unnecessary blood. This picture became the quintessence of the American protest movement at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s.
And it was written in blood. Blood of yesterday's teenagers - arrogant, loud-voiced, but defenseless. She also gave birth to the phrase "Flowers are better than bullets", which became the slogan of pacifism.
Behind this dramatic image is an ugly reality. Half a century ago, in seemingly prosperous America, an event occurred that did not fit with the postulates of an all-conquering democracy and liberalism: the National Guard opened fire on unarmed students.
Nice guys got puddled
Late 1960s. Having settled the conflicts in the Caribbean region at the very least, the US government turned all its attention to Indochina, where the Vietnam war had been raging for a decade. What did the United States care about the problems of the ragged Vietnamese peasants? Oh, the most direct! After the outbreak of the civil war between North and South, Ho Chi Minh's struggle to build communism in Vietnam, taken separately, was supported by the red machine of the Soviet Union and China, which joined the socialist camp. The rapid turn of the political vector of continental Asia "to the left" was regarded by the US government as a large-scale communist expansion. Let the Soviets rule the region with impunity in the midst of the Cold War? - what a pipe! The USA got involved in the war on the side of the pro-American Republic of [South] Vietnam,turning the struggle for power within a backward country into one of the largest military conflicts of the second half of the 20th century. And, as it turned out later, in his own pain and shame.
In 1965, direct US military intervention in the Vietnam War began. The initially cautious actions of the Americans, with the increase in the military contingent, grew into blind arrogance. “Get out of the way, younger yellow-faced brother,” the creators of freedom scornfully threw, pushing the South Vietnamese military aside. "The good guys are already here." But the clumsy tactics of the newly arrived "saviors" led to the opposite effect: many soldiers and officers of the Vietnamese Republic went over to the side of the North Vietnamese army and Viet Cong guerrillas.
Gradually, the conflict merged with the civil wars in Laos and Cambodia. The intervention, planned as a kind of overseas blitzkrieg, turned into a fierce protracted war. Washington was able to fully appreciate the scale of its mistake only in early 1968 after the infamous Tet Offensive, during which the bloodiest battle of that war took place. And although the offensive ended in defeat for the communists, ordinary Americans had no illusions about the "weakness of North Vietnam" and "the imminent end of the war" - all these were just empty words. Public support for the "victorious and liberation" struggle, as well as trust in the government, not only fell - it crashed on the floor. In the United States, pacifist protests flared up against senseless victims. Crowds of dissenting youth, initially peaceful hippieswho smelled the smell of napalm (and at the same time realized that they themselves would be the next batch of cannon fodder for Vietnamese slaughter), and then the radical students who joined them, overcame the White House.
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The government decided to urgently scale back the excessively costly and destructive intervention for American soldiers, leaving the Vietnamese to independently deal with their own problems in the ravaged country. Officially, this flight from the battlefield, where the States were so dashingly torn, was called the "Vietnamization" of the conflict. Richard Nixon, who went to the polls with a promise to end the Vietnam War with an "honorable peace", became the president of the United States.
On the same rake
For a while, the protesting masses managed to calm down. But not for long. Eastern Indochina was still a huge frying pan in which human meat was roasted. In March 1970, in Cambodia, where civil war was in full swing, there was a coup, as a result of which the right to turn the government wheel was usurped by General Lon Nol, who sympathized with America. Almost immediately, Lon Nol expelled the North Vietnamese from the country and cut the Cambodian aorta of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which supplied the Vietcong with resources. In response, North Vietnam went to war in Cambodia, joint efforts with the local Khmer Rouge, putting the new government on the brink of survival. So where, after that, are your assurances about the helplessness of North Vietnam, pray tell?
What did Lon Nol do? That's right: he turned to Washington for help. Apparently, the United States felt that learning from its own mistakes was the lot of weaklings. On April 26, Nixon, after a lengthy and controversial discussion, approved the operation.
It was a crash! The decision to send troops to Cambodia blew the minds and other painful spots of American inhabitants. Many felt that Nixon not only openly violated his campaign promise, but also intended to drag the United States into a new bloody war. America has never seen such violent and massive student protests in all the years of the Vietnam War. Students at the University of Kent in Ohio could not remain silent either.
Blooming lilacs of Kent
Anti-war protests in the hills of Kent University, accompanied by the incessant battle of the bronze "Victory Bell" on the main university tower, continued for three days and three nights. This happened throughout the country, but at some point, the Kent riots ceased to be peaceful. Some radical "chanterelles" took the matches and decided to turn up the spark of the stormy sea of dissenting minds.
Late in the evening of May 2, 1970, the building of the reserve officer training courses burned down almost to the ground - only an equally ugly charred skeleton remained of the ugly structure. This was the last straw - a wave of indignation overflowed the patience of the local authorities. Mayor Leroy Sathrom panicked and asked Ohio Governor James Rhodes to call in the National Guard for order. On May 3, units of the 107th Cavalry Regiment and the 145th Infantry Battalion arrived at the university. The campus was cordoned off. National Guard fighters were ordered to adhere to a policy of silent intimidation and avoid interaction with students, but in any faceless mass of camouflage color there must be a person with his own opinion. And he was found. The events described below are not known for certain,they were restored only from fragmentary evidence, but they were destined to go down in history.
On that day, May 3, 19-year-old freshman Allison Krause and her boyfriend Barry Levin were walking around the campus, they noticed one of the guardsmen by the name of Myers. From the muzzle of his old, WWII, M1 rifle, a lilac flower stuck out. A friendly conversation began between the guys and the soldier when one of the officers jumped up to them and began to chastise the kind-hearted warrior for the flower. Myers tried to make excuses that this was a gift, to which the officer said, "Forget all these peaceful things!" crumpled the unfortunate lilac and swung to throw it to the ground when Allison rushed to the officer and snatched the flower from his hand. The officer gave her a contemptuous look and walked away with the air of a winner. “What happened to the world? - Shouted the girl in his back. "Flowers are better than bullets!"
Flowers are better than bullets! - these naive words will soon become a symbol of the anti-war movement. But Allison will not see this anymore …
Not all Guardsmen were like Myers. Soldiers and the police with kicks, bayonets and truncheons drove the students into the hostels, 70 of the most violent people had to be arrested. Martial law and curfews were declared throughout Kent. Governor Rohde hastened to publicly declare that the poisonous weed of the protester, an infection, was uprooted in Ohio, along the way calling the students "criminals and brownshirts, the worst human waste in America."
University Hills Massacre
But the intervention of the military, contrary to the governor's assurances, did not pacify the protesters. On the contrary, it provoked an even greater wave of indignation. The very next day, even those who had remained neutral for the time being joined the rioters (there were about 19 thousand students at the University of Kent). “Many of us went to bed that night as liberals, and woke up as radicals,” recalled freshman Joan Zimora.
On May 4, the Victory Bell rang again. Protesters flooded the campus. The shouting of the crowd grew louder. Enraged by such impudence, the governor gave the order to suppress disobedience at any cost. "If need be, I will order the troops to occupy the university all twelve months of the year!" - the local king and god was indignant. The soldiers transferred to Kent from Cleveland, where they had to pacify the "wild" strike of railroad workers for five long days, were on edge.
The students were gathering at the top of Blanket Hill when an officer's jeep jumped up to them. The order to disperse had absolutely no effect on the protesters, so the car left just as swiftly, but before it could hide, the guardsmen appeared in gas masks. They began firing tear gas grenades at the crowd of unarmed students. Lining up in a chain, the soldiers began to press the rioters until they were pressed against the building of the College of Fine Arts and broke into two streams - one rushed to the parking lot, the other to the hostels. At some point, the students who ran to the parking lot turned to face their pursuers and rushed back up the hill. Shrouded in choking smoke, they began to shower the governor's soldiers with hissing grenades, stones and pieces of asphalt that had not yet exploded. True,everything was in vain - the pedestrian "shells" almost did not reach the soldiers. A couple of steps separated the protesters from college knowledge when the guardsmen raised their rifles. The first salvo rang out. Someone shouted: "Don't be afraid, they shoot blanks!" But blank cartridges do not knock people down. One by one, the students began to fall. The blood of boys and girls ran down the grass, mixed with the ground, and the asphalt turned purple. Some in horror rushed back to the parking lot, others paralyzed with fear mice froze under the gaze of empty eye sockets blowing at them. The blood of boys and girls ran down the grass, mixed with the ground, and the asphalt turned purple. Some in horror rushed back to the parking lot, others paralyzed with fear mice froze under the gaze of empty eye sockets blowing at them. The blood of boys and girls ran down the grass, mixed with the ground, and the asphalt turned purple. Some in horror rushed back to the parking lot, others paralyzed with fear mice froze under the gaze of empty eye sockets blowing at them.
Thirty years later, photographer John Philo, then an undergraduate in photojournalism, told CNN, “I thought they were using blanks. When I raised the camera, I noticed that one soldier was aiming directly at me. A shot rang out. In the same second, a cloud of dust separated from the statue next to me, and the bullet bounced off it and got stuck in the village.
I even fired the camera when I realized the bullets were real. On that day, Philo filmed a Pulitzer Prize-winning shot of the murdered Jeffrey Miller, surrounded by a sobbing student and people emerging from hiding places.
The shooting ended as suddenly as it began. The slaughter of unarmed students lasted only a second, but a painful scar cut into the memory of the nation. Nine people were injured, four were killed. Ironically, none of those killed belonged to the radical wing of the protest. Jeffrey Miller, 20, was more into Hemingway than politics. His age-old Sandy Scheuer was not distinguished by serious convictions and was generally a big coward. She did not participate in the protests, but this did not stop the bullet - the girl was mortally wounded when she passed by. The same fate overtook William Schroeder, the third killed by the National Guard. The boy of nineteen years old was a typical representative of American youth. The star of the local basketball team, he loved to joke and was generally the life of the party. On the day of his execution, he jokingly put on a red carnation on his lapel, saying that it was his "Purple Heart" (this medal is awarded to the dead or wounded enemy of the American military), and teased the guards: "Do you have fingers on the triggers?" It turned out to be itching. The fourth victim was Allison Krause. The very sweet and naive Allison, who sincerely believed that flowers are better than bullets. When the soldiers opened fire, they rushed to the grass with their boyfriend. Barry got up afterwards, and she remained there. When the soldiers opened fire, they rushed to the grass with their boyfriend. Barry got up afterwards, and she remained there. When the soldiers opened fire, they rushed to the grass with their boyfriend. Barry got up afterwards, and she remained there.
The news of the tragedy at the University of Kent spread throughout America, and then the whole world. The ranks of the antiwar movement were replenished with more and more new members. More than 4 million students joined the protesters. The Soviet poet, Nobel Prize nominee for literature Yevgeny Yevtushenko wrote the following lines in honor of the deceased student:
But what about the culprits? But there were no guilty ones. The commission to investigate the shooting of students recognized the use of weapons by the National Guard as unlawful, but none of the entire chain of participants in the massacre - soldiers, officers, local authorities - was ever punished. It's just that the bad Vietnam War took a couple of extra lives.
Vietnam war
One of the largest military conflicts of the second half of the 20th century, occupying an important place in the recent history of Vietnam, the USA and the USSR. The war began as a civil conflict in South Vietnam. In the future, North Vietnam was drawn into the war, later receiving the support of the PRC and the USSR, as well as the United States and its allies, who were fulfilling their obligations to protect their friendly South Vietnam. As events developed, the war became intertwined with the parallel civil wars in Laos and Cambodia. All of the fighting in Southeast Asia from the late 1950s to 1975 is known as the Second Indochina War.
Reflection in culture
- Neil Young's "Ohio" (1970)
- The Isley Brothers song "Ohio / Machine Gun" (1971)
- Poem by Evgeny Yevtushenko "Flowers are better than bullets" - dedicated to the deceased Allison Krause
- Comic strip "Transmetropolitan" No. 57, 12 pages - almost an exact copy of the photo
- Jonah Philo Fragment in The Simpsons "D oh-in in the Wind"
- Fragment in the film "Keepers" (2009)
- The play "In Kent May" at the "Theater on the Embankment"