VOICES OF VIETNAM
September 4, 2026
William S. Adams
United States Army
Vietnam Veteran • Signals Intelligence Soldier
8th Radio Research Station
Born November 18, 1948
Atlanta, Georgia
“First He Was Given a Number. Then He Built a Life Around the Values Behind the Uniform.”
The Nineteen-Year-Old From Atlanta
Before Vietnam, William Adams was a young man working as a mechanic and hospital orderly.
He was nineteen.
Then came a number.
The Vietnam-era draft lottery reduced the futures of thousands of young American men to numbers that could determine whether their lives continued along familiar paths or suddenly turned toward military service.
William’s number came up.
But rather than surrender every decision about his future, he made one of his own.
He enlisted in the United States Army so he could exercise some control over the military specialty he would receive.
Soon William Adams had another number attached to him:
05B
Radio Operator.
Later:
05C
Radio Teletype Operator.
Those letters and numbers would eventually place a radio headset between a young soldier from Georgia and an enemy somewhere in the jungles of Vietnam.
Welcome to Vietnam
There would be no gentle introduction.
William arrived at Phu Bai carrying his belongings and a manila folder.
As the aircraft descended, the newcomers received instructions that erased any uncertainty about where they had arrived:
RUN.
DO NOT STOP.
GET INTO THE TRENCH.
Mortars were already falling.
William’s first moments in Vietnam were spent moving through trenches while incoming fire repeatedly interrupted their progress.
There was no orientation tour.
No sightseeing.
Vietnam introduced itself immediately.
Eventually William reached the compound that would become home:
8th Radio Research Station
The name sounded almost academic.
The work was anything but.
The War Behind the Radio
The soldiers of the Army Security Agency and its Radio Research units fought a largely invisible war.
William and his fellow soldiers worked with communications and signals.
They listened.
They analyzed.
They located.
They reported.
According to Naomi’s account, William was assigned to support combat forces as a Radio Frequency Researcher, performing duties that included intercepting and monitoring enemy radio transmissions, identifying frequencies and assisting with direction finding.
Direction finding could transform an invisible radio signal into a location on a map.
Multiple bearings could help triangulate an enemy transmitter.
And that information could mean the difference between American soldiers walking unknowingly toward an enemy position…
or knowing the danger was there.
William’s work also included processing intelligence, teletype operations, maintaining communications and participating in tactical airborne missions used to map radio-frequency activity.
Sometimes the most important soldier on a battlefield isn’t the one firing.
It is the one listening.
Into the Air
Some missions took William above Vietnam.
Radio-frequency mapping aboard aircraft allowed specialists to search for enemy transmissions and help locate their sources.
According to his daughter’s account, those airborne duties could also assist in locating downed friendly aircraft and getting help to Americans who might otherwise face capture.
Below him stretched the Vietnam remembered in thousands of photographs:
mountains…
forest…
rice paddies…
villages…
roads disappearing beneath jungle canopy.
But William was listening to another landscape.
The electronic battlefield.
Every transmission had meaning.
Every frequency might reveal something.
Every bearing could matter.
And Then There Were the Other Jobs
Military occupational specialties rarely tell the entire story of a soldier’s day.
William might have been a radio specialist, but he was still a soldier.
That meant guard duty.
Firewatch.
Cleaning.
Chow details.
Patrolling the camp.
Learning skills outside his specialty.
And eventually teaching some of those skills to other soldiers.
Naomi tells us those additional responsibilities contributed to William’s eventual promotion.
That is another part of the Vietnam story worth preserving.
A soldier could spend part of his day working with sophisticated intelligence equipment…
and another part scrubbing dishes.
The Army has always possessed that particular sense of humor.
Cards, Books and a Few Minutes of Normal
Even in war, young men find ways to remain young men.
William and his buddies played cards.
One favorite was a game they called “highs and lows”, also known as in-between.
For a little while, cards could make Vietnam disappear.
Books were another treasure.
There weren’t enough recreational books to go around, so reading material circulated from soldier to soldier until nearly everyone interested had read it.
Before missions, the men inspected one another.
Anything unnecessary came out.
Anything capable of making noise came out.
A jingling object could betray a position.
Books stayed behind.
It was practical preparation.
But Naomi captures something deeper.
That pre-mission ritual became:
a breath before uncertainty.
Because every man preparing to leave understood something nobody needed to say aloud.
Somebody might not return.
The Photograph
Among William’s Vietnam memories is one image that strips away every uniform and every political argument surrounding war.
A wallet-sized photograph had been recovered from a fallen enemy soldier.
It showed a man…
his wife…
and their infant son.
Enemy.
Soldier.
Husband.
Father.
Human being.
William carried the memory of that photograph with him.
It was a reminder that the men on opposite sides of the battlefield had families waiting somewhere.
War divides people into armies.
A family photograph makes the divisions harder to maintain.
One Year Later
Eventually the day arrived.
William Adams was leaving Vietnam.
The M16 stayed behind.
The equipment stayed behind.
The bases stayed behind.
The mountains stayed behind.
So did the radios, trenches and missions.
But Vietnam itself didn’t remain there.
It traveled home inside memory.
Naomi puts it beautifully.
What remained was stored in that most secret of vaults:
the human mind.
William returned to America.
But the nineteen-year-old who had arrived under mortar fire was not the same man who came home.
Trying Civilian Life
William attempted to return to civilian society.
He worked as a police officer.
But something had changed.
Vietnam and the Army had instilled in him a deeply rooted sense of discipline, responsibility, integrity and what Naomi describes as a:
MISSION-FIRST MINDSET.
William struggled to find that same culture outside military service.
So he made another choice.
The first time, war had helped determine his direction.
The next time…
William chose the Army himself.
He reenlisted.
From Enlisted Soldier to Officer
And this is where William Adams’s story becomes particularly remarkable.
The young enlisted radio specialist continued serving.
He grew.
He learned.
He led.
And eventually:
SERGEANT ADAMS BECAME OFFICER ADAMS.
William transitioned from the enlisted ranks and became a commissioned officer.
The nineteen-year-old who had once arrived at Phu Bai clutching his belongings and running for a trench eventually became responsible for leading others.
His military career would span more than twenty years.
And Vietnam would not be his only war.
Desert Storm
Years after Southeast Asia, William again served during wartime.
This time the battlefield was dramatically different.
Not humid jungle.
Desert.
His daughter specifically remembers her father’s service not only in Vietnam, but also in Desert Storm and the many military challenges between and afterward.
A career that began because a young man’s number had been selected ultimately became something he deliberately chose to continue.
The drafted generation had produced a career soldier.
But His Greatest Legacy May Wear Marine Dress Blues
Then the Adams story crosses generations.
William had children.
Among them was a daughter named:
Naomi Gunther
Naomi grew up knowing that her father had served in Vietnam.
But as she explains in her biography, knowing that someone served is different from understanding what service means.
Eventually Naomi raised her own right hand.
She joined the:
UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS.
Her MOS was 0451, Airborne and Air Delivery Specialist.
The Army veteran’s daughter became a Marine.
And only after experiencing military life herself did she begin to understand her father differently.
His discipline made more sense.
His standards made more sense.
His integrity made more sense.
His mission-first mentality made more sense.
She realized that Vietnam had helped shape the father who had shaped her.
A Father’s Service Becomes a Daughter’s Compass
This may be my favorite part of William Adams’s story.
Naomi credits her father’s military values with influencing her own decision to serve.
Think about that chain.
A nineteen-year-old Atlanta kid gets selected for military service.
He goes to Vietnam.
Vietnam changes him.
He makes the Army his career.
He becomes an officer.
He serves for more than twenty years.
He raises a daughter according to values forged partly through military service.
That daughter becomes a United States Marine.
And decades later, she sits down and records her father’s Vietnam story so another generation can understand him.
That isn’t simply history.
THAT IS LEGACY.
The Manila Folder
Naomi begins William’s Vietnam story with an image I don’t want us to lose.
A nineteen-year-old arriving in Vietnam with a manila folder in his hand.
Inside that folder were papers.
Numbers.
Orders.
Assignments.
Bureaucracy.
To the Army, William Adams could sometimes seem like another number moving through an enormous military system.
But then Naomi gives us a beautiful image at the other end of his journey.
After decades of service, her father’s career had created many more manila folders.
The young man who once carried his orders into Vietnam had built an entire lifetime of service between those folders.
And behind every document was something a personnel file could never adequately record.
A mission.
A friend.
A frightening night.
A radio transmission.
A card game.
A book passed between soldiers.
A photograph of an enemy soldier’s family.
A lesson.
A memory.
A life.
VOICES OF VIETNAM
This is why we created Voices of Vietnam.
William Adams does not have a name carved into the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
And for that we are grateful.
He came home.
But coming home did not mean Vietnam disappeared.
He carried its lessons forward.
Into his Army career.
Into his leadership.
Into Desert Storm.
Into his family.
And eventually into a daughter who put on a uniform herself.
Today we honor not the moment William Adams died.
WE HONOR THE LIFE HE BUILT BECAUSE HE LIVED.
Our Voices of Vietnam Veteran
On September 4, 2026, The Micky Spano Radio Show proudly honors:
William S. Adams
United States Army
Vietnam Veteran
Signals Intelligence Soldier
Career Soldier
Commissioned Officer
Desert Storm Veteran
Father of a United States Marine
Born November 18, 1948
Atlanta, Georgia
He arrived in Vietnam as a nineteen-year-old carrying a manila folder.
He ran from his aircraft into a trench under mortar fire.
He learned to listen for an enemy he often could not see.
He helped turn radio signals into intelligence that could protect American lives.
He stood guard.
He flew missions.
He played cards.
He read borrowed books.
He came home.
And then, remarkably…
he chose to serve again.
More than twenty years of military service followed.
And eventually his example inspired another American to wear the uniform.
His daughter.
Naomi.
So today we say two things that should have been said to every Vietnam veteran when they returned:
WELCOME HOME, WILLIAM.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE.
And to Naomi Gunther, United States Marine Corps veteran:
Thank you for listening to your father.
Thank you for preserving his story.
And thank you for proving that the values carried home from Vietnam can travel from one generation of American warriors to the next.