Customer Reviews

...and a hard rain fell: A GI's True Story of the War in Vietnam

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(20)

 

 

Not having ever served in the military I don't know how typical John Ketwig's experiences he relates in this book are, but I did find it to be a very interesting book. Given the choice, Ketwig would rather have not served in the military at all, but he enlisted in the hopes of avoiding being sent to Vietnam. His recruiter told him he would probably end up in Germany. He relates a story that took place in basic training involving a recruit named "Fatso" who was physically abused by a sadistic sergeant who took advantage of his authoritative position to bully this soldier in ways that this so-called officer will have to live with for the rest of his life. The soldier eventually took his own life and the officer was "relieved" of his duties. Ketwig's attitude probably was typical of other soldiers in that they just wanted to put in their time in Vietnam and survive. Rather than come home to an uncertain future after his year in Vietnam to serve the remainder of his time, he volunteered for a year in Thailand. Once home, he felt he didn't have much in common with his former classmates who were now in college. He saw a lot in his two years in the military and now came home to find it hard to get a job. Ketwig provides the reader with a cynical view of the army, and not having served in the military, who am I to say he is wrong. I can only say I enjoyed the book and found it easy to read. I'm sure a lot of veterans who served in a like capacity will be able to identify with him.

Like many Vietnam veterans, my father has not provided many details about his tour in Nam. I read this book hoping to get some insight about what he may have encountered while in the War and the internal conflicts he may have experienced. After reading this book I was able to ask specific questions to my father and he was willing to share for the first time....This book is a MUST READ for anyone looking for a personal experience, horror, mental hardships, relational issues that this Vietnam Veteran experienced.

A few reviews here criticize Ketwig for being anti-war before, during, and after. But isn't that the point of the book? Ketwig makes it pretty clear early on. No, he wasn't a heroic grunt fighting in the rice paddies and central highlands... he was just a kid who loved muscle cars, motor racing, getting laid, and playing drums. Not college material, he was faced with enlisting and learning a trade, or waiting for the draft and surely being sent to Vietnam. As it was, he enlisted but wound up in Vietnam anyway, working on the motorpool as a welder and mechanic. But he was exposed to things most of us would consider traumatic. It left him scarred, and being a civilian myself, I do not feel entitled to judge him. If you want to read the story of a true hero, read "Brennan's War" by Matthew Brennan. If you want a firsthand account of a scared teenager who wanted to be anything BUT a soldier, read this book.

The fact is, not everyone is cut out to be a soldier. Ketwig was not, and never claims otherwise. Being the mother of a soldier myself, my heart lies with the volunteer soldier, one willing to lay his or her life on the line to protect our freedom. But on the other hand, I sympathize with those draftees of the Vietnam era. It was a rough time to be young. And Ketwig's story is gritty and heartfelt. And tells one side of the story quite well.

Personally I thought the book was amazing. It was quite shocking to hear firsthand what the war was truely like, instead of how the government portrayed it. And in response to the other person's comment... I can imagine that you would have spent alot of your time drinking and doing dope too if you were over there, caught in that type of situation, so get over it. If that's what it took for him to deal with being sent over there, then who are you to judge?

I thought the book was outstanding, and would recommend it to anyone who cares to know about what really happened over there...

I was one of the lucky ones. I turned 26 in the fall of 1963, just before Vietnam got serious for Americans. That was the magic age - "they" didn't draft you after 26. John Ketwig was not so lucky. I stayed home and watched the growing horror as it unfolded in all its bizarre varieties - from napalmed kids to lying politicians and generals - Ketwig and millions of others (most of them Vietnamese) lived that horror every day. I've read many, many books about Vietnam; this is one of the two or three best. Had I not just retired from teaching in a college prep school, I would want to make it part of one of my courses. It's a shame - one almost wonders if it's a conspiracy - that it is no longer in print. Probably no one had to silence the book; it's just too real to be "marketable." Publishers don't promote such realism; they prefer the "Rambo" type absurdities. Besides conveying the reality of Vietnam from the ordinary soldiers point of view, Ketwig also devotes much of the book to the subsequent year he spent in Thailand. He was not an "ugly American;" he spent a great deal of time getting to know - and love - the people and their culture. This book moved me to tears for a lost generation of Americans and Vietnamese. Even those who survived bear the scars, both psychological and physical (e.g. Agent Orange) of that war. At the end, Ketwig quotes Vietnam veterans marching at the dedication of the Wall in Washington and chanting: HELL NO OUR KIDS WON'T GO. He's right, HELL NO.

...AND A HARD RAIN FELL, John Ketwig's memoir of his time in Southeast Asia is a crucial book to read for an understanding of the fog of war and the spiritual wounds all veterans face. ...AND A HARD RAIN FELL takes us inside Ketwig's experience with a clarity amazing for a memoir. This book is even more critical today, as Iraq and Afghanistan blaze across our national consciousness.

Unlike Ron Kovic (BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY) John Ketwig did not start out as a flag-wrapped patriot convinced of the rightness of stopping the Red Menace at any cost. In the first third of the book, Ketwig speaks frankly of his thoughts of draft avoidance and Canada. He is squarely antiwar from the first word. A few reviewers have derided Ketwig for "whining" about "everyday inconveniences" and for having a generally jaundiced view of the military and "his patriotic duty", but other authors and Vietnam Vets have documented well the miasma of depersonalization that characterized the U.S. military in the middle 1960s. Eighteen year old boys like Ketwig were not volunteer soldiers, they were essentially draftees or forced enlistees, ripped from the familiar and the comfortable to be dropped into a thoroughly alien and brutish environment designed to turn them into killing machines in a matter of weeks. The trauma of such a transformation is hard to understand unless one has lived through it.Therefore, Ketwig's complaints about glassless windows in the winter, sheetless bunks (both ostensibly to prevent suicides), and regimentation by insult seem self-indulgent except to one who has felt (and intrinsically resisted) the same internal twist and torque imposed by an outside force.

From the moment of Ketwig's arrival in Vietnam he recognizes (if he cannot yet admit) the futility of the American mission. Transported from Ton Son Nhut Airbase (under rocket fire) in a bus with screened windows (to keep out thrown trash and grenades), and sent to Long Binh to guard an ammo dump (frequently booby trapped by guerrillas), there seems no spot in Vietnam where order reigns or where the American presence has imposed any sort of real peace.

Ketwig's transfer "upcountry" to Pleiku is similarly fraught with trauma: He volunteers for a convoy to embattled Dak To, and is nearly killed by a land mine. His compound is shelled by South Vietnamese turncoats. He finds himself in a bunker with other terrified teenagers wondering just what the hell is happening as the Tet Offensive explodes all around him. Unspeakable filth, rats, scorpions, poisonous snakes, booby traps, friendly fire, Vietcong infiltrators, the curses of the local people, and bizarre accidents are a daily ration which callouses him and his fellow soldiers. Dead men, crushed, broken, bleeding and napalmed bodies sear their eyes. Vietnam is a huckster's bazaar, selling death and trinkets to all bidders.

Thoughtful, Ketwig wonders why. His answer, to provide seed and farm implements to the peasantry seems like a more sane and ultimately successful way to combat Communism, but as a lowly Pfc his opinion is neither required nor respected. Ketwig is required only to repair and remove the gore from hosts of battle-damaged vehicles. A reflective reader has to stand with Ketwig, and question authority.

After a year of soul-scarring experiences and unsure of his place in The World, he applies for a transfer to Thailand, where he discovers and embraces a version of the Buddhist culture he had sought to find in Vietnam. The year in Thailand is therapeutic (both for Ketwig and the reader, who is as overwhelmed as the author by this point), but it also allows him to shut his demons away largely without confronting them.

Despite his love affair with Thailand, The World beckons, and Ketwig goes home to suffer the dislocation common to many Vietnam Vets. In time he makes a life, but his demons never rest. At least until he begins to tap this story out painfully, page by page, hunt and peck.

...AND A HARD RAIN FELL is as much an exorcism as it is a story of one man's war. It may not be every man's war; but it is a valuable recollection of what war does to human beings. There are others, more Mom-And-Apple-Pie, more heroic, and even more jingoistic. This is one, a well-written one, that cannot be ignored.

I joined the Army in 1964. I was skinney hungry, and more interested in three meals a day than the $87.00 a month pay. I was with the 101 at Ft. Campbell when the war started heating up. I was in Viet Nam from Jan. 66 to Jan. 67. I was first assigned to C-2-7 cav. as a PFC grunt. I was there for about 6 and a half months. I than went to D Co. 227 AHB as a door gunner to the end of my tour. I went to Penang in Nov. 66 for my R&R. I was agenest the war before during and after. But I still did what I was sent over there to do. I say Three Cheers for John for having the balls to call it the way he see it. And I see it the same way. THANKS John for expressing the my thoughts exactly!

I bought this book for my husband sometime last year, and he was so interested in the matierial and the quality of the author's rendition of the trauma these people endured, he actually teared up. Most books are top notch, but this one (he said) was alot better than he expected. It's great, give it a read>>...

I've read many books about Vietnam, but this is the most truthful, telling, and understanding I think of them all

I really enjoyed this book for a number of reasons. Being a high-school student, it was good to read a book that so vividly portrayed a GI in the Vietnam War. It really bugs me that schools (or at least mine) don't really teach us too much about this war. This was my first real exposure to this war. I am frequently taught in school about the Civil War or the Revoulutionary War, but never about Korea or Vietnam, not even about World War I. The only thing I disliked about this book was the fact that being that I didn't know much about the war, I didn't have any idea about certain places and conflicts he was talking about. I recommend this book to anyone that would like a good read about a man's true experiences in a not-much-talked-about war.