BERNARD SHAW, CNN ANCHOR: At Ohio's Kent State University Thursday, a bell tolled at the moment when 30 years ago National Guardsmen opened fire on students protesting against the Vietnam War. CNN's Gary Tuchman reports.</s>GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Robby Stamps stood in this parking lot at Kent State University exactly 30 years ago.</s>ROBBY STAMPS, FMR. KENT STATE STUDENT: I turned around right from this spot, took about two, three steps back that way and that is when I felt the bullet go in.</s>TUCHMAN (on camera): You were shot right here?</s>STAMPS: Right here, 200 yards away from where the line of fire was.</s>TUCHMAN (voice-over): Robby Stamps, one month shy of his 50th birthday, almost died one month shy of his 20th. This photograph of a horror-stricken teenager next to a dying Jeffrey Miller symbolizes the carnage that occurred at Kent State on May 4, 1970. Alan Canfora was a Kent State protester who waved a black flag at National Guardsmen. Shortly after this picture was taken, at least 28 guardsmen fired more than 60 shots in 13 seconds. Canfora was one of those shot.</s>ALAN CANFORA, FMR. KENT STATE STUDENT: Thirty years later, we don't want retribution, we don't want revenge, we don't want these triggermen to go to jail. What we want is the truth.</s>TUCHMAN: Some of the wounded believe guardsmen planned to fire their guns. Others believe it was inexperienced guardsmen who panicked. But all believe something important came out of that horrible day.</s>STAMPS: Kent State was the beginning of the end of the Vietnam War, even though it took five years after Kent State for the war to finally come to an end. Those four students who lost their lives saved thousands of Vietnamese and American lives in the process, they did not die in vain.</s>TUCHMAN: Gary Tuchman, CNN, Kent, Ohio.
Kent State Anniversary: Vietnam Protesters Look Back 30 Years After National Guardsmen Opened Fire on Them