TIME IS ON MY SIDE, already written across the first helmet I ever wore there. And underneath it, in smaller lettering that read more like a whispered prayer than an assertion, No lie, GI. The rear-hatch gunner on a Chinook threw it to me that first morning at the Kontum airstrip, a few hours after the Dak To fighting had ended, screaming at me through the rotor wind, ‘You keep that, we got plenty. Good luck!’ and then flying off. I was so glad to have the equipment that I didn’t stop to think where it had to have come from.
