Here's a narrative from Colonel John Gergulis (ret) elaborating on the event described above in "The Bugle". After almost 50 years he found out that the event had been published by the Brigade. Here's a little more info from his recollection, for the record:
"Memory still serves. Got call from Battalion that subject unit was in trouble. S-4 had been monitoring Battalion net. Battalion wanted to know what we could do?? Long and short of it, S-4 had policy to have pre-bundled stores of beans-bullets-water- medical supplies at the ready for 'drop' or transport to units. Huey delivery out of question. Hostile ('HOT') LZ! Grabbed SFC Dixon and headed to An Khe airstrip. Rounded up willing to fly CV Caribou and young Captain Carrobella (??) to fly. Loaded pallets and took off. Had unit coordinates, PRC 25 and a map. Remember comments floating around: Are y'all some kind of nuts/crazy/insane/ stupid! Got airborne and finally able to contact unit. Young Lieutenant in command. Very dark night. Took several passes at 1,500 feet in area where we thought unit located. Using dead-reckoning (Can you hear us? Are we overhead? To your right, left, front rear, of your location? Finally got aircraft properly oriented. Now, to identify the unit on the ground (Drop Zone). Determined not smart to use flares. Smoke useless at night. Told young Lieutenant in charge to have as many of his Troopers shine night light (Red lens) straight up from their location so we could specifically identify their location and orient the aircraft for the drop. This took some doing. Finally able to pin-point unit and to make several practice runs. As we dropped down to 500 feet and began our runs, aircraft started taking enemy rounds. SFC Dixon and I were scared shitless but, had no back up plan on how to get the hell out of there. Anyway, Captain Carrobella (??) was also scared shitless as he didn't want to have to pay for a downed aircraft! We had but one choice. Abort or give it the best we could under the less than ideal circumstances. We chose the later and went down and in making two passes as SFC Dixon pushed out the bundles while I hid on the floor by the forward bulkhead. Thank God SFC Dixon was not hit and was able to push the bundles out the rear ramp. As best we remember, the drop bundles, four in number (??), landed where the unit was able to retrieve, before the 'gooks' could effectively engage. We made it back to An Khe in one piece. CV fuselage was riddled with bullet holes - - no rounds penetrated engines or fuel lines!! Our lucky flight!
And, now you know the rest of the story."
