CHAPTER 11 Lindy, still reeling from the loss of his mother, gained a bit of solace when he received a letter from a fellow mutineer. He read it with bated breath and learned the remaining twenty-four had stood in solidarity until the end. They had all steadfastly pleaded not guilty. On June 6, three months after Lindy’s escape, the verdict came down for the rest. After a four-hour deliberation, the bad news was they had all but one been found guilty of mutiny. The remaining soldier was charged with willful disobedience. However, the Army, feeling the heat, delivered some good news. The prison sentences handed down ranged from one year to fifteen months, a huge reduction from the first three, of fourteen to sixteen years, that had drawn so much public outrage. Even so, the new sentence was imposed on top of their others for desertion. All would carry the stigma of dishonorable discharges for the rest of their lives. In subsequent letters and news articles eventually reaching Lindy, much to his delight, his friends reported that dissent in the Army’s own ranks continued to expand. The G.I. Underground Press spread to every stateside post in the country. That publication fractured into five others. “Vietnam GI,” written about in Fred Gardner’s book The Unlawful Concert, talks about how tough and witty the ‘servicemen only’ writings were. “It’s thesis was that the Army’s rank structure reflected the inequalities of the civilian world and that America was but a subtler version of the Army, wherein social and economic pressures played the role of orders to effect the will of society’s generals, such as General Motors, General Electric, General Dynamics, General Mills, and the rest of their corporate peers.” Re-enlistment rates had plummeted. One influential story that accelerated the unrest, credited The Presidio 27 demonstration and its public outing of the ridiculous charges and inhumane treatment of prisoners. Such was the power of “The Mutiny” that by the second half of 1969, the Army was granting 1 in 4 applications for Conscientious Objector status. Specialized training for guards, which had been one of the seven “mutinous” demands the prisoners were charged for, became part of the revised Army manual. Lindy pondered how, like himself, some people can’t submit to situations of total authority. He never had. He tried. He failed. Mainstream society and the nature of the Army, indelibly intertwined, didn’t suit him. That proved true with most of the others he met in prison. Nevertheless, the Army kept trying to convert the unconvertibles. Inadvertently, Lindy had found himself in a very unenviable position when called to action. He faced it bravely, survived the terror, and came out the other side. He began to take pride in himself and what he’d done. Being a part of something bigger than himself was empowering. How the decision to take part altered his life was evident. Also evident was that the actions of twenty-seven men had made a difference in the way the Army treated its most vulnerable recruits. Protesting worked! Terry Hallinan, their attorney, later elaborated, These are the children of America’s poor. For the most part they are uneducated, but not stupid. They may have come from loveless homes, but they can love. In peacetime they would never have been held in the Army, but because of the war, because the Army needs every live body it can get, they couldn’t be discharged. This war is so unpopular among GIs that the Army senses that if it started giving these draftees a Conscientious Objector status, or psychiatric exclusions, the floodgates would open and thousands of men would try to get out. Since they can’t let them out, yet they can’t use them in the field, they fill the stockades with them. A case in point was that In the spring of 1969, recruiters couldn’t fill their quotas to serve. Out of the required 2,600, they only had 814 men sign on the dotted line
Returning for the second time to the courthouse near their remote mountain town, Lindy put on his most mournful puppy dog face and pleaded to the kind-looking Marriage License clerk. “It’s a small detail that doesn’t change anything,” he looked deeply into her eyes. “My mother would have re-signed if she could,” he explained. “Please overlook the wrong date logged on the original ‘marriage permission letter’ that my mother signed before she died.” What a plea! And so, on a hot July afternoon, Lindy and his bride said their vows at the Kamloops Courthouse. He in homemade sandals, she, holding his hand, with flowers in her wild tangle of curly dark hair, they vowed to stay together forever. Lindy needed a “forever.” For some, the notion of communal living conjures up images of warm evenings filled with impromptu musical gatherings, drugs and few clothes after scorching days spent tending gardens, animals and kitchens. The FX Ranch certainly fit that bill. Short on rules and long on doing one’s own thing, Lindy thrived. Part of a couple, they rocked and rolled until a baby was on the way. A child changed everything. Making the decision to opt out of the drug-and-alcohol lifestyle to one of abstinence, they left the FX Ranch. Winding their way south until the Thompson River met the Fraser, they stumbled upon the small town of Lytton. Just across the deep and swiftly moving ‘Mighty Fraser River’ sat reserve land, owned by indigenous locals. After asking around, they met an owner of some reservation acreage gracing a hill that overlooked the confluence of two rivers. As they got to know each another, he learned that the family of two would soon be three and offered tenancy. Crossing the wide Fraser River, rippled with strong currents, made getting to the land an adventure in itself. In the book Tom Sawyer, flat wooden rafts were a common mode of transport on the Mississippi River. A larger Canadian version delivered people and one car at a time across the Fraser River. The raft, virtually flat except for a low buttress of wood tacked on the sides preventing vehicles and people from sliding off, folks clambered aboard, held on to short grab bars, and were towed by a rope and pulley system to the opposite shore. Even on calm days it was not a ferry for the faint of heart
. Once on the other side, they and their new friend reached their destination after a two-mile walk down a road so dusty you sometimes couldn’t see your feet. “You can stay in the cabin,” he invited, pointing to a wisp of a windowless, leaning, one-room shack. “That is, if you don’t mind fixing it up a bit,” his eyes questioning why anyone would.
Thrilled with the offer, they began making plans to start their family on what could only be described as “a wing and a prayer.” Fall, spent shoring up their very humble abode, and preparing fields for spring crops, soon gave way to a Canadian winter. Spending the long evenings huddled around a hard-working wood stove, with books a plenty, he practicing guitar, she painting her fabric art, the winter passed. On a sunny morning in June 1970, in the fortified cardboard shack they’d been living in for many months, Lindy delivered his son. “When he was born all the features of his face exploded like a piece of popcorn,” he told his sister in a letter. “So that’s what we named him. Popcorn. Poppy for short.” Lindy felt grief overcome his elation when he imagined how excited his mother would be if she were alive. What he would have given to have presented her with his tow-headed bundle of joy. A letter he fired off to his father with news of his grandfatherhood elicited no response. Four years after the birth of his first son, he delivered his second in a cabin they had built in Powell River, a much larger waterfront town north of Vancouver. They named him Prarie. After his birth, the “forever” marriage began visibly slipping away. Lindy, so wounded from disillusion, rejection and fear, developed a suspicious nature that for the rest of his life did not serve him well. His coping mechanism was to renounce authority in any form, often to his detriment. During the years of bullying, judgment and abandonment he’d become rewired against all societal rules. Often nightmares of witnessing the murder of his cellmate deprived him of sleep. His rage against social injustice for himself and others manifested in unpredictable and often offensive ways. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree, his sister observed as the years went by. Like his father, Lindy’s anger would sometimes surface over minor infractions, leading his wife and even close friends to walk on eggshells. Life with him was like in the nursery rhyme, ‘When he was good, he was very very good, but when he was bad, he was horrible.’ His mostly happy, endearing whimsical characteristics were sometimes, unpredictably overshadowed by furious accusations and criticisms. His volatile behavior became harder and harder for his wife to bear. Finally, the marriage took its last gasp and dissolved
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So much I didn't know or forgot about.
I don't want these stories to end!