Drafted veteran recalls his service time as avionics tech in Vietnam

GLEN ALLEN — He was only 20 and out for the summer from the University of West Alabama in Livingston when he went to check on his draft status.
You see, the Vietnam War was underway, and Billy Mack Spann of Winfield knew his time would come.
“They said, ‘You’re next’ and sure enough, when I got back home, I had my draft notice,” he noted. “I knew I was going to Vietnam, because that was the hottest part of the conflict.”
Weighing in at 135 pounds, Billy Mack said he was surrounded by “big, muscled-up boys,” when he went for his physical. He passed and noted they did not.
He’d grown up in Glen Allen and attended Hubbertville School, although his address was later changed by the post office to Winfield. He was “country tough” and still is.
Billy Mack did his six-weeks of basic training at Fort Benning, Ga., now known as Fort Moore.
“Those drill sergeants weren’t very nice back then,” he said, “Nowadays you can blow a whistle and get a time out if they get rough on you. They were rough on us, but it was good, because we knew we were going to Vietnam. That’s where everyone was going.”
After his U.S. Army basics, Billy Mack went for six months of “Advanced Individual Training” at Fort Gordon, Ga., now know as Fort Eisenhower.
He became an E-5, or Specialist Second Class, and served 13 months in Vietnam at Camp Radcliff in An Khe about halfway up the country in the central highlands of Vietnam.
“I was an avionics technician, so I wasn’t out in the field fighting,” he explained. “But I was with the 1st Air Calvary Division, which was in heavy fighting at the time.
“I was lucky to have a basecamp, but we had mortars and rockets coming in there. You never knew what would happen next. And we had people working there who were Vietnamese, and a lot of times, they had to kill them in the battle. They were double-agents.”
Billy Mack worked with the radio and navigational equipment on the helicopters.
“We had a flight line, and we’d fix the navigation and communication equipment, and then we’d have to go up and test fly it,” he explained.
“A lot of the times, the equipment would work on the ground, but when you’d get up there, those old helicopters shook so much, the equipment wouldn’t work so well. So, I got to fly. I had to go up and check everything out in the air to make sure they were working.
“I received three air medals. After 50 hours of flying, you’d qualify for an air medal. I also got the Bronze Star and a Vietnam Service Medal. I got those medals 40 years after I got out of the military. I went to the mailbox one day and they were in there.”

Glad he served his country
Billy Mack said he’s glad he served his country and didn’t avoid the draft.
“I was a patriot, and I served my country,” he said. “It was an experience like I’d never known before. It was good for me. It taught me how to eat everything. Back when I was home, I’d just eat certain things. But in the army, you learn to eat everything.
“It was a good experience for me. It taught me about life, and I learned how important life was. Before, I was a young kid, and I thought you lived forever. But you don’t do that. I’ve been lucky to survive. I’ll be 80 on Dec. 16. I spent a birthday over there. I missed my folks.”
Billy Mack’s parents were Roston and Myrtie Bell Spann of Winfield. The couple had 11 children that included seven girls and four boys. Billy Mack was the 10th child.
“They’d let you call home every once in a while,” he noted. “When you called, you’d have to say ‘over’ during the transmission like you were talking on the radio. They didn’t have cell phones back then.”
The weather and living conditions were also vastly different from anything Billy Mack had ever known in Marion County.
“Vietnam was semi-tropical, and we had typhoons over there,” he said. “And we had storms and monsoons. It’d rain for two or three weeks without stopping.
“We lived in tents, like a big church tent, but they had wooden floors. We were air mobile. We had to be able to move out within 24 hours if we had to. Everything folded up. The work benches and everything. It was a big deal then.”
Billy Mack feels fortunate he doesn’t experience overwhelming traumatic flashbacks like some veterans, although he did not exit Vietnam unscathed either.
“I don’t sleep much,” he said. “After you’ve been over there, every little noise wakes you up. I know that sounds crazy. People say, ‘You’re crazy,’ and I guess I was when I went over there, but I was crazier when I came back, because every little ole noise wakes me up.”

Grateful for recognition
Billy Mack noted he is grateful when people recognize his service time.
“When a fellow tells me ‘I appreciate your service,’ that’s rare,” he said. “Most people don’t think about it, but it means a lot to veterans. I was ready to sacrifice my life, and I didn’t even realize it. I was a young guy. I got over there, and I saw what could happen to you.
“I was lucky I was in a basecamp, but those guys out in the jungle...”
Billy Mack said he made a lot of friends in the service, and lost a lot of them, as well.
“I had a lot of friends and lost quiet a few people who were helicopter pilots and crew chiefs who got shot down that I knew,” he said.
“They’d bring the helicopters in, and we’d work on them, and we’d get to know them. And they’d end up getting killed. I saw a lot of bad things. There was blood splattered over everything in those helicopters where they had shot them down.”
Billy Mack at one point tried to sugarcoat his situation, but his mother was not easily fooled.
 “She was worried I was in a bad place,” he explained. “And one time, I wrote her, ‘It’s just like downtown Winfield, there’s nothing to worry about.’ But I was in the worst place over there. That’s why they sent the 1st Calvary over there. They called it the hottest place--where all the fighting was at.
“Of course, we were at the basecamp, but she wrote me a letter and said, ‘Just because I’m old, doesn’t mean I’m dumb. I just saw in the paper where your outfit got hit.’
“It was in the Marion County News. I never did mention about how good it was or how bad it was anymore.”
After his parents passed away, Billy Mack found a box filled with all of the letters he’d written home during his service time.
“I have every letter I ever wrote her,” he said. “I wrote pretty often, and she saved all those letters.”
Besides letter writing, Billy Mack and his mother also shared a love of flowers.
“She always loved flowers. And now I do,” he said. “She’d say, ‘I want my flowers while I’m living, don’t put them on my grave when I’m gone.’
“She’d write me a letter, and she’d take the blooms off of flowers and put them in the envelope. And there’d be tears there where she’d cried while she was writing to me. She was so sad I was over there.”
Billy Mack recalled that not all the military mail made it through, nor did all its contents.
“They’d go through your mail and they’d open your packages,” he said. “People would send you cookies, and there’d be half of them missing.”

Neighbors in a strange land
Billy Mack said his mother would send him the newspapers--which would be two or three weeks old when they arrived--and he’d share them.
“It was funny,” he said. “I knew people over there from Double Springs and Sulligent. And we got a new company commander in one day, colonel Flavil L. Johnson, and he stood up and said, ‘I’m from a little place you’ve probably never heard of. I’m from Fowlers Crossroads’ (in Fayette County, near Eldridge).
“I stood up and said, ‘I’m from Glen Allen.’ We became buddies. I’d let him read my paper. He was a pilot and flew the “company aircraft” helicopter, and he’d want me to come along when he had to fly to certain places. He also flew Gen. (William) Westmoreland sometimes, who was the top commander over Vietnam.
“I even had my own helmet like I was somebody. Even though he flew the general’s plane and was a colonel, Flavil was like most of the others and pretty much treated everybody alike.
“They didn’t pull rank on anyone over there. You talked to people like they were somebody. You didn’t talk down to them like they did in basic training, because everybody had to work together.”
According to the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association, Johnson retired as an army lieutenant colonel, spent some time as a training school director for Bell Helicopter International and later passed away at age 83 in 2013.
As for Billy Mack, he went back to school after the war and finished college. He taught school for a few years, did a few other jobs and eventually went into business for himself, where he’s remained for most of his life.

Thank you, Billy Mack!
We are grateful for Billy Mack allowing us to share his story for our special Veterans Day issue. He actually came by at our request to submit his photo and information for our tribute section, but when we heard a little bit about his service time, we knew we’d found our feature article.
He was casually dressed, but so were we. And why not be unless the situation and location calls for otherwise. After we took his photo, but before he went on his way, Billy Mack shared one last memory with us.
“Some of the movies about Vietnam are filmed down in Florida where they have the palmetto trees, but it wasn’t really like that there--it was semi-tropical,” he said.
“I had a buddy who was a crew chief, and he’d bring a stalk of bananas in from the banana plantation. Some of the biggest rubber plantations in the world are in Vietnam.
“That’s where they’re making these overalls I have on now. But when I was over there, they tried to kill me. By the way, these are my best overalls,” he joked. “And the only thing bad about my photo in the newspaper is that it looks just like me.”