THE BEST OF THE BEST - An American Story - Personal Care - http://maxpages.com/bannister/FloridaPage2

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For Author's Notes, Remarks, and Sgt. Hendrix' picture, go to
http://www.angelfire.com/la/kaylee/bestofbest.html
Kay Lee

WARNING: CONTAINS SOME "BAD" WORDS, but it's a heck of a story you shouldn't
ignore!

THE BEST OF THE BEST
An American Story
By Gary Brooks Waid

My name is Gary Waid and I'm a federal [marijuana] prisoner currently
incarcerated by the state of Florida. I'm not new at life inside, I've been
down over 6 1/2 years, been given a bunk in at least 19 different facilities.
During all of that period I've lived with ex-GI's doing time. They're
everywhere. In transit, lockdown, in all the federal and state prisons, every
place where there's a cell, you're likely to find a veteran of some foreign war,
usually Vietnam, marking time for every imaginable reason. I've befriended a
few, not for any particular reason, mind you, but because we happened to be
thrown together at some point on the rocky penal road to nowhere.

At FCI Texarkana a huge biker named Ronnie, from the Austin, Texas branch of the
Banditos, liked to read my stories. One day I gave him a piece about a
biker-bank robber who farted uncontrollably (every beginning writer does farting
bikers. Ernest Hemmingway probably did farting biker stories at first.), and
when he gave it back he said: "Waid, you should be on medication," which made
me feel great. I knew I had talent if a biker wanted to medicate me. Ronnie and
I used to talk some, but you had to be careful about what you said. He would
get way upset at any perceived disrespect or flapdoodle regarding the POW-MIA
thing. Ronnie was still in Vietnam sometimes.

Also at Texarkana there was a guy who helped me considerably with my back pain.
He'd done his time in the Vietnam bucket, too, and must've known his cookies
when it came to explosives because they called him "The Mad Bomber." The hacks
were very careful not to piss off the Mad Bomber, so his expertise in various
martial arts must have been reflected in his jacket.

Sometimes a veteran is off his rocker. Or he's not really, but has a reputation
he likes to cultivate. At Texarkana an odd sort named Don once asked me if I
wanted to bunk in his cell (he had one of the preferred cells with extra room
and no direct sunlight in the afternoon), but he always seemed to be kicking old
roommates out for imagined infractions, and most of the guys seemed pretty
normal to me. They always said he was crazy, so I declined the offer and
remained in my own sweltering but familiar box. Don had been a Marine. He did
two tours in Vietnam, then became an instructor of something in a country where
dictators regularly hired professional help. I didn't need any lessons from
pros, thank you.

Here at River Junction W/C all the inmates are older guys. We have more than
our share of Vietnam vets, and of course I know a few. Biker Bill
Wagener (See Dressing the Pig [http://www.angelfire.com/la/kaylee/thepig.html]
is a vet. My companion on the laundry truck is another. I help a guy named
Panabaker with his spelling occasionally and sometimes he tells me a funny
story...

...and then there's Sergeant Lawrence Hendrix, my buddy, who during the
Hell-for-leather days of the '60s was proud to be a part of an elite group of
soldiers within the United States Army of Occupation in the Republic of South
Vietnam.

Sgt. Larry Hendrix ain't no joke. He was an Airborne Ranger, one of those guys
who jump out of airplanes, and he did three tours of duty in the mud and the
blood with both the 101st Airborne and the U.S. Special Forces. In combat he
earned the Silver Star and the Bronze Star with a V for valor. There's a special
caveat on Larry's jacket: "Do not approach this inmate with violence," because
he used to teach FNGs (fucking new guys) how to survive in the jungle. He was a
hand-to-hand combat expert, and an expert at seeing what was in front of him.

I'll get back to Larry in a minute, but first there's something you should know
about some of the above guys. Three of them, three out of the seven I've
mentioned including Sgt. Larry Hendrix, were compelled at trial to submit their
military records, to be used as evidence against them during sentencing.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Okay, obviously I'm no expert about war. I wouldn't know a Bouncing Betty from
a Boomerang. But I'm going to do the best I can to engage you folks in a
dialogue, because there's a problem here, a problem similar to the drug war, in
that large powerful government agencies and policy knobs think it's appropriate
to warehouse American citizens for lifetimes as a means of controlling something
they know nothing about. And not just any American citizens, they're
participating in the removal of men who were the best we had, but who's training
makes them embarrassments.

I've only met a few honest-to-goodness warriors in my life, and Larry Hendrix is
one of them. Of course he's also a smartass. He thinks like a Waid. We could
be brothers. The other day we had this conversation:

"Hi, Sarge, what's up?"

"Everything but my sentence, Waid," he says scowling. "Your face is red."

"Ah, well, I just got off the yard and shit. Did six billion pushups and shit.
But it's gonna rain and shit so --"

"Shit, Waid!" He grins. "Shitty shitty shit. You live a loose life."

"Huh?"

"You got a fixation. Go to the toilet. I thought you were a writer."

"Words is me."

"I can tell. Let's go to chow. I'll trade you my green lumpy shit for your, you
know, shit and stuff."

See? Not too many convicts would jink me over such a moronic digression. I mean,
you know, it's lonely in here and shit: it's nice to have someone to talk to.

So anyway, Sgt. Larry Hendrix was being a warrior during three consecutive tours
of duty, while back home in the world I was a flower child. I was a very good
flower child, of course. Still am. But skill-wise my flower child couldn't
compare to Larry's bad-to-the-bone. His three tours must've been whiz-bang
bitchin' things, because the first time I heard him actually talk about his
history in combat my gonads shrank. Words fail me here. His true tales are
absolutely the most horrifyingest, terriblest stuff imaginable and I ain't
lying. Larry's liver was more death-defying than Rambo ever thought of being.

Actually it was my neighbor Charlie who asked him how someone gets a Bronze
Star.

"Well, said Larry, "mostly by being in a situation. You're scared out of your
mind and just sort of react."

He must have felt expansive, then, because he rummaged around in his property
and pulled out a document and handed it to me. Here's the condensed version of
what it said:

"On the morning of some long-ago day, during a firefight in the highlands west
of somewhere nobody's ever heard of, when a bunch of wounded men were lying
screaming in the middle of a minefield, Sergeant Lawrence Hendrix, with total
disregard for his own safety blah blah blah, crawled on his belly through Hell
and rescued his men."

The Sarge spent a couple quality hours inching back and forth across a fucking
mine field.
I was speechless. "What...I mean, how did...Why - ?

"A lot of stuff was flying around, Waid. you could hear the guys out there...It
was like everyone thought I had nerves of steel, but my whole body was shaking.
I just kept inching along using my bayonet, sweating bullets, poking my bayonet
into the dirt ahead of me, probing around for the mines. You had to find the
mines from the side or they'd blow. I crawled in and out of the minefield,
another guy started helping, we got all the wounded out and the dead. We humped
'em to another area for dust off. When it was over, I sat in the dirt and
pissed all over myself."

Charlie and I just stared at the Sarge, stunned. I've heard a lot of things in
my life. I've seen a lot of things. I've heard prison stories that would burn
your ears and I've even been slightly brave a time or two, what with the sailing
and the pot smuggling and that. But this was over the top. I'd never heard such
a reluctant admission of worth.

That was just one story though. Larry could float something by you that'd give
you the willies before you even gathered it all in. Once he told me how he went
nuts during an engagement:

"You can read about Vietnam and see movies, Gar, but it's true what they say
about being there. You had to be there, at least where I was. I remember one
time we were in a big firefight, threatening to get overrun. You could see the
VC coming across this open rice paddy and we were hunkered down and I was so
damn scared I was blind almost. I'd set up a bunch of claymores out there so I
just started watching the enemy and firing off the claymores when they got
inside my kill zone. I had all the triggers, so they're coming in, running like
crazy and I'm firing my mines off, Blam Blam, shit and bodies and brains are
flying, and I'm so fucking freaked that I don't know who's dead. Blam Blam,
those claymores raised hell, Waid. Then for some reason I pick up my M-16 and
start firing. I'm standing inside the perimeter, Waid, and I empty my clip,
eject, jam another clip in, standing there like John Wayne, blowing holes in a
bunch of enemy dead. I'm out of ammo so I've got a sidearm on my hip pulled out,
I'm screaming, shooting my 45, Boom Boom, and the guys behind me are yelling,
"Sarge, sarge...they're dead! It's over!"

"They shipped me to Japan for R&R and evaluation. I'd seen too much combat, they
decided. I was gonna go home."

"Thank God for John Wayne," I said.

"But I didn't want to go home. I wanted to win that war, Waid! So they sent me
back, but as one of the rear-echelon personnel with the 101st Airborne. When I
arrived, shit I said, this is an in-country training camp for FNGs! There's no
action here! I was wrong, though. As wrong as I've ever been. During the second
or third week, in the middle of training my first group, my point man walked my
patrol into a VC ambush."

"Why are you still around, Larry? What's your trip?"

"I was a badass. The first thing I'd taught those guys was what to do in an
ambush."

"What do you do in an ambush?"

"You fire, Waid. You don't duck, dodge, run or roll sideways or any of that
Hollywood crap. You stand and lay down as much fire as you can in the direction
of the ambush. You make the enemy duck, make 'em hide, make 'em wish they'd
never seen your ugly asses. I remember I had this kid named Camacho from New
York on point. When I saw something weird, I turned and opened up and screamed
Ambush left!, and he turned and fired too. And then everybody was shooting.
Camacho has some cojones, Waid. We were a patrol of fifteen new guys, and we
killed eight VC without losing anybody. Couple guys had minor wounds. And that
was in spite of the fact we got caught in the killing zone. When they asked me
how it happened, how in hell we got out of that shit, I didn't tell 'em it was
an accident. They couldn't believe it."

There are one too many stories and not enough space here. Eventually Lawrence
Hendrix came home a bona fide war hero. By the time he got out of the army a few
years later, he was involved in broadcasting and music promotions around Ft.
Bragg, North Carolina, which led to a larger role as a promoter and producer of
talent. He's got a photo album filled with pictures of his family, but also
pictures taken of him with various musicians and groups from the '70s.

But back in the late '70s and early '80s, a job in music often meant a life
involved with cocaine. Movie stars, politicians, musicians, people from all
strata of society were indulging in nose candy, and admitted freely their love
of the stuff, or didn't admit it but indulged just the same. They said it was
non-addictive. Said it enhanced performance. Said it was a harmless stimulant
and great fun. SO Larry became entangled in an imbroglio, a man with a gun tried
to kill him, and former Sgt. Lawrence Hendrix, 101st Airborne, Special Forces, 3
tours, silver Star, Bronze Star etc, shot the man first in a him-or-me situation
that could have easily been dismissed as self defense had it happened to someone
else.

The actual charges aren't relevant now. Larry would have long-ago been released
from prison except for a whopping enhancement and a sleight-of-hand at trial in
which a firearm element was charged in the information. Except the jury was
never instructed about a firearm element, nor was it submitted to the jury for a
factual determination. You can't do that. But they did, in spite of Larry's
clean record (he'd never been convicted of anything.

But it gets worse.

The judge had ordered a PSI (Pre-Sentence Investigation), which is common
practice before sentencing a man to a prison term. The report, when submitted by
the prosecutor, was permanently sealed. To this day, Larry has not been allowed
to see what was in that report to create such an impossible situation and to
paint him as some sort of deranged killer. It was right out of Kafka: You go
in a room, you sit, the man behind the desk consults a mysterious book, and
you're judged by whatever he finds. Remember, Larry had no record.

So while the judge was considering this sealed PSR, the prosecutor requested a
side-bar for the record and said: "The State thinks this defendant may have his
own graveyard, your Honor, that we'll never find. He may be guilty of other
robberies and assassinations that the jury doesn't know about."
What robberies? What assassinations? Why weren't these allegations made
public? Was there a secret agenda? It was like if you were to put huge,
gruesome, rusty handcuffs on an accused man, tattoo his face, head, and march
him through the judge's bedroom. Or like mounting little devil horns on, say,
your grandmother, then parading her before the court, making her stand on a
table and growl and bark like a dog. Of course, Larry's not your grandmother.
But like I said, he had no record. And why is his PSR still sealed today?
Then the prosecutor used Larry's military record in front of the jury, asking
witnesses questions and going on and on about the training and skills of a
Special Forces Airborne soldier. He forced a theory that went something like
this: Hey, people, it wasn't really a fair fight, wasn't really self-defense,
wasn't really cricket at all because this nasty bad-boy defendant here had been
a Vietnam killing machine!

So Larry went to prison, sentenced to 75 years hard time.
That's right, 75 years, over two-thirds of which is an enhancement for being a
soldier. And his appeals have all gone for naught because whatever was in that
PSR has convinced the higher Florida courts to uphold a lie by the lower Florida
court, and to ban Larry from submitting anything further pro se (acting as his
own counsel). He had his day in court, they said, which is not true because he
never got to see the enhancement evidence, and the jury wasn't presented with
part of the gun evidence, and some of the other evidence was spoken in side-bar
and sounded like an editorial describing Attila, King of the Huns.

All of this is confusing as hell to me, but typical of the crap I hear every
day. Except every day a man isn't done in for 75 years! Larry's adjusted
out-date is 2021.

Larry's been down a long time now, all of the '90s, most of the '80s, and River
Junction Work Camp is the first time he's been allowed to live in a semi-relaxed
environment. He's a certified law clerk, a litigator, who fights for the rights
of Florida inmates, so if you've go a question or a problem, he's the guy to
see. He is admired and respected by everyone in blue behind the wire, and also
by the guards who know some of his history.

But his wounds are daily on display, bleeding still. The scars of prison line
his face and exhaust his eyes and when he walks he limps with Airborne Ranger
pain, but also with the effort it takes to keep his pride and integrity intact
in a world that doesn't want him, that doesn't need him, that has never needed
him except during one dark day in America's past that we wish would just go
away. For Sgt. Lawrence Hendrix, that dark day has turned into thousands of
dark nights in dark cells in some of the most violent prisons in one of the most
politically corrupt states in the greatest country the world has ever known, the
land of the free, the home of the brave.

I wanna be an Airborne Ranger,
Live a life of guts and danger...

Yeah, right. The greatest country in the world has a self-serving president
who's own involvement with cocaine is said to have begun when Larry's did, but
is somehow excused as youthful indiscretion, which makes it acceptable for him
to judge others from on high. The greatest country in the world has an
ex-president who pardons smarmy, oily, billionaire profiteers, but didn't have
the courage to call a halt to the madness in our courts. The greatest country
in the world has a population eager to punish, but that bows to the antics of
football players, wreathes them in glory and gives them MVP awards for bravery
on the field, toasts them, lets them speak in victory parades, lets them tell us
how sorry they were about, you know, the thing outside the bar that time.

There are a lot of vets in prison in America, and some of them are still being
punished for their training and their devotion to duty in far flung theatres
around the world. Who cares? We don't?

What America wants, but what it won't get is absolution. Neither will it get
these men to finally succumb and fall down smooth-faced and porcelain-eyed from
all that brain-numbing rejection after rejection. There are minds at work
inside here, and emotions - angers, joys, selfless industries, reckless
courages, contempts, horrors, memories - men hanging on words, children of a
greater God, inferno-hardened but not for what they did, only for what they
endure today - and saddened for what will be endured by the next groups that
goes to war for liars.

And it's the politician-facilitators that should be recognized as dangerous.
They're the serial criminals. They're the ones who are slack-jawed and shrill
and constantly afraid of things and asking guys like Larry to do the dirty work.

Everybody reading this should go to the FL DOC website and look up Mr. Lawrence
Hendrix, DC #094601. Punch him in, scroll him down, look at the man. Look into
the eyes of Sarge. He's the best of the best. The best we ever had. The
question someone should ask is not what did Larry do, but when did he do it.
And the answer is not 20 years ago when he protected himself from armed attack,
but 34 years ago when he crawled on his belly, eyes squinched up and
pee-in-your-pants scared, so that the men he was serving with could be redeemed
and could live and go home.
Look at the man. There's your Rambo, Folks. In Prison.

FL DOC Website
http://www.dc.state.fl.us/ActiveInmates/inmatesearch.asp

Kay Lee
2613 Larry Court
Eau Gallie, Florida 32935
715-831-9071 / 321-253-3673
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
Mahatma Gandhi

************
Making+the+Walls+Transparent
http://www.zyworld.com/kaylee/garywaid.html
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Family and Friends Making the Walls Transparent
http://www.angelfire.com/fl4/fci/family.html
*****************
Inspired by A Smuggler's Tales From Jails
http://www.angelfire.com/la/kaylee/tales.html
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All projects of the Journey for Justice
http://www.journeyforjustice.org
*************
Petitions to move the Valdes Trial - Please, please sign.
http://www.angelfire.com/la/kaylee/valdespetition.html
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