And a Hard Rain Fell by John Ketwig

And a Hard Rain Fell Reviews

• 
  Eric_W

  A very powerful book, especially for those of us who faced the draft and Vietnam in the late sixties. Ketwig was sent to Vietnam where he faced unimaginable horrors. He rails against the army, as did most draftees, who became the "expendables" while the "lifers" stayed in their air-conditioned bunkers behind the lines and collected medals for themselves.
  
  He "volunteers" for a second year to guarantee a billet in Thailand rather than return home because he doesn't think he can explain his 370 days in The Nam. While there he is recognized as a first-rate welder and is airlifted to somewhere classified -- obviously Laos, where our government assured us we were not -- to do some welds on an artillery battery that was shelling North Vietnam.
  
  The section after he returned home feels a little hurried and uneven, almost as if he couldn't wait to get it out. His data regarding the effects of Vietnam on his fellow soldiers are nothing short of frightening. The Air Force "Ranch Hand" report found that mortality in children of Vietnam vets before 28 days was three times that of the population unexposed to Agent Orange. But of course the report said they would not hesitate to use it again.
  
  Prophetically, while in Thailand he has dinner with a Japanese businessman(remember this is 1967) who says the new battlefield will be the marketplace. "War is too expensive." Obviously, we in America haven't been listening.
  
  A must read
• 
  Betsy Ashton

  I generally shy away from such books, but a new friend of mine gave me a copy of a book he wrote in 1985. He thought it would have meaning for me. It did, but maybe not in the way he intended.
  
  
  ...And a Hard Rain Fell: A GI's True Story of the War in Vietnam by John Ketwig is still in print. It's a hard book to read if you were in Vietnam or if you were on the home front, protesting or not, waiting for a loved one to come home or not. The back cover likens this to Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, a great anti-war novel. I read it years ago during a sit-in. I read it again before I plunged into Ketwig's story. Different, but so much the same.
  
  Ketwig was a kid when he went to Vietnam. Late teens. He was there near Dak To and through the Tet Offensive. His book, divided into three sections, is stream of consciousness for the first half. His fear, his anger, come through in long run-on sentences where his emotions pour out onto the page. His second section, his healing year in Thailand before he returned to The World, is less frenetic. As he feels he's safe, his language is less powerful. The return to The World in section three is the weakest and shortest. But what he writes in the first section overrides the weakness of the last section.
  
  This is one of the most painful books I've read about war. The writer, my friend, is damaged by PTSD. He still hasn't recovered, but his bravery in writing this book was one step in his healing process.
• 
  Jonathan

  An absolutely searing and visceral account of one young mans war in Vietnam and its after effects on his life. At times extremely hard to read, making one ask many questions that have no answers, chiefly among them "Why?". I laughed, I wept, I squirmed, the author has a gift and hits all of ones emotions. If you read only one book about Vietnam...read this one.
• 
  Kayla

  This was actually assigned for one of my history classes and I dreaded reading it so much that I was finishing the book as I walked into my final for the class. But it was so worth it and is one of my many all time favorites.
• 
  Geoffrey

  Ketwig's memoir of his time abroad as a soldier in southeast Asia and his ongoing struggle to make sense of the world that birthed the conflict in Vietnam is written with a raw and excruciating honesty. You will feel his fear, his hopes, his confusion, and get a deeper, more painful first-person view than you can even imagine in what I believe is hands-down one of the best personal accounts of the war.
• 
  Pinky And The Brain

  For a soldier who lived in base for part of a tour and in Thailand for the other part, he sure did have a lot happen. Imagine meeting the enemy socially or suffering from depression due to a bad experience with drugs. Yes it's all here, it's sometimes well written, but at times lacks that quality that can lead the reader to believe what happened, maybe didn't.
• 
  Shelley Alongi

  A type a personality with an anxiety disorder and perhaps a lot of good reasons to have it exaserbated.
  I wasn’t quite sure what to think of this book when I started it. It seemed like a stream of consciousness though I did notice that it became more focused toward the middle of the book. Maybe this is to clarify confusion? I don’t know. The last thing I read about the Vietnam war was probably 20 years ago out of college so I was glad to see that the knowledge I had picked up then I retained because I knew the names of places and I understood the concepts that were being expressed in the book. They seemed to line up with what I had read and what others had told me.
  
  This book was probably not what I expected. I know there is and was a lot of opposition to the war but I don’t think I really expected all the sexual information. I wasn’t put off by that I just don’t think I expected it. Sometimes I wondered if he was expressing the feelings that he had about the war and its activity and all of its philosophy in hindsight and I suppose that is not objectionable in a book. It seemed as if he had thought through some of this and was expressing it all after the fact although he was trying to line up his feelings with what his experiences were both in Vietnam and in Thailand. I read this book in doses but finally about the middle of the second year I got to the point where I needed to finish it. I thought OK I can’t read this much longer. I understand the discouragement and all of that I just need to get through this. I thought it was interesting that he had gone on to marry the person he was writing the letters to and had established a career because some of the things I’ve read about the vets point to that not happening. I do know some people that went through that and they have establish careers but I haven’t read much about that. I haven’t read many books on the subject since college so my information has been fragmentary.
  
  I did enjoy the book if you can enjoy a book like that. It’s always hard to peer into a persons soul. It was enlightening and it was political and factual and expressed a lot of feelings that I thought were dramatic. But that is as a friend of mine says, the human condition. We all have flaws in our thinking somewhere so I don’t doubt the veracity of the experiences expressed. There were parts that were predictable. For example, I knew he wasn’t going to get the girl. Something just told me the way he was writing about her that he wasn’t going to get her. And
  It was worth the read for sure. I know I’ll pick up more books on the subject but I don’t know if I’ll encounter one quite like that. I hope it accomplishes the goal that was set before it.
  
  there is one more thing that comes to mind as I finish this review. I guess you can call it my training as a possible historian in college. I have always learned that one should cite examples and in one particular instance in this book when he discusses the Pentagon papers he expresses the opinion that they were full of lies but he doesn’t tell you what kind of information he reads in the papers to back that up. He may have made that point by talking about it during the book itself but I wasn’t familiar enough with the Pentagon papers to see if that was the case or if he just expressed an opinion and left it at that. I guess it just kind of makes me want to go read the Pentagon papers that sounds like something I would do. :-) So just something else to go research. I think I saw another book by this author so I’ll have to check it out and see if it is a continuation of this book or something entirely different. If I’m thinking about the book a few hours after I finish it definitely makes an impression.
  
  Something else that just comes to mind is the use of music in the book. I am a musician and I can relate to listening to music to help sort through feelings. I know that he was using marijuana and other things to do that but he did mention the use of music and I thought I could at least relate to that part. So I’ll need to go look up some of the songs he mentioned because I didn’t know all of them but I was happy to see that I recognized a lot of the band names. :-) It’s been a long time since I read a book where I could relate to all the musical information in it.
  
  Another thing that stood out to me when I was reading this was his interaction with the locals not only in a sexual way but getting to know them and eating the food and getting into the streets and seeing the temples in the shops and the people. He was trying to use all those things to help come to grips with what he had experienced and I don’t think I’ve read too many books where people do that. I know it might have been the fact that he was in Thailand which gave him that freedom and he appeared to put it to good use.
  
  The last thing I’ll mention in this review is that it seemed sometimes as if he was turning against America but he was using his American standards to judge the American conduct of the war but he was also using those expectations to try to sort out his own feelings even though he was turning against them. I was thinking about his sexual activity. His upbringing would not have a proved of the way in which he conducted himself there. He was trying it seems to break free of those expectations in all cases but was constrained by them. I wonder if in the entire expression of his revulsion and his developing philosophies if he was trying to come to grips with what he experienced and what his expectations were. That idea needs a little more exploration. The book also emphasizes that Americans tend to what we call compartmentalize things. In for example, we must put on a mask and act as if everything is OK if it isn’t. You must try to have a social life, a family, a job, a measure of success that makes it appear to others around that you are OK. We like to keep our feelings constrained and we don’t feel like we have the freedom to discuss those with others or even admit them to ourselves. I know that things have changed in those regards to some degree with a more ready willingness to go into therapy or be more honest with ourselves about our own feelings. I think this book was definitely a look at how we treat our own feelings and don’t want to face those of others because they don’t always express our preconceived ideas of success. He did have a family and buy houses and do all those things but these feelings and experiences were so traumatic that they were forced to the surface by ordinary events such as the viewing of movies and documentaries. I have read that and other books about other Vietnam vets. I think that is some thing that happens to other people.
  
  I just thought all of the feelings in this book reflected on so many things that you could spend pages analyzing the analysis. I wonder in closing if I would have understood this book if I had read it in my college history classes about the Vietnam war. I think as I have learned other things about history over the years combined with all of the other information I have taken in about the human condition and how we respond to things that those two major ideas help to deep in the understanding of this very complicated book. And then again maybe in 10 years I’ll pick this book up and think it’s not so complicated after all. :-)
• 
  Steve Woods

  This is one of the best books dealing with the Vietnam experience I have read. Perhaps part of its appeal for me came from the parallels between Ketwigs experience and my own. Both of us served in non combat units but were drawn into combat from the periphery by the nature of our work. Though precise experiences were different our responses were oh so very similar. More importantly his observations and thought were so ver familiar to me; now after so many years my own have faded into a kind of heavy cloud that carries a felt sense but from which much detail has fled. This book brought my own responses back in stark relief.
  
  The other similarity was his tour in Thailand. I did almost the same thing. After Vietnam I went to serve as a free lance soldier with FANK forces in Cambodia.There the combat I saw was of very high intensity and at close range. After I was slightly wounded, and the bubble of a sense of teenage invulnerability had been shattered by that event I went to Thailand to recover and spent several months traveling around that country, which then before the ruin of commercial tourism, it was the most beautiful place in the world and the Thai people before the greed of western consumerism got them by the throat were a very special people. Again his observations and thoughts as well as many of his experiences paralleled my own. This is a frank and truthful account by a young man who was typical of so many. we are all old now and the rawness of those years has dimmed, some may wonder and ask what it was like, the answers can be glimpsed here.
• 
  Caitlin

  Ketwig's memoir is an excruciating emotional odyssey that follows a young man from small-town USA through his draft into the Vietnam War and the subsequent experiences that teach him the meaning of the term "expendable."
  
  "...And A Hard Rain Fell" delivers not only an account of the physical and emotional trauma of the war and aftermath, but also the cultural upheaval and political corruption and turmoil of the US in the 1960s. Prepare to experience the news of MLK Jr and Bobby Kennedy's assassinations, the moon landing, Woodstock, civil rights struggles and peace protests, the Fort Kent shootings, and all of the hope, despair, anger, and joy that accompanied these events through the mind of a young, wide-eyed soldier who struggles to find hope and spread peace as an unwilling participant in the Vietnam War.
• 
  Shaunaly Higgins

  Ketwig's personally subjective account of a non combatant in Vietnam at the age of nineteen is brutally raw and emotionally insightful. It chronicles his experience, during which he confronted death and disillusionment not only with his country but with humanity and most importantly, with himself especially upon his return to American soil. Sadly, the same many faced during this horrific time in our Nation's history and to date, emotional detachment is a continued battle as P.T.S.D. is prevalent in many of the lives of our Vietnam Veterans.
  
  In my opinion, it wasn't a spellbinding read but it does offer a good recollection of war whose insights are as applicable today as the time period it describes.
• 
  Michael DeSantis

  I found this book in a box outside of a pizzeria in my town, the only one that really caught my eye. I forced myself to stretch this story out as long as possible over a couple of months because you just become that enthralled in Ketwig’s story. This book did an amazing thing for me as a young 18 year old, especially the emotions and fears that transcend time and situations. One of the best stories I have ever read.
• 
  Erin

  This is one of the most touching books I have ever read. And I don't use phrases like, "I was touched." It's really great.
• 
  Aaron

  Engrossing and infuriating book. Mostly because, of all the first-person Vietnam books I've devoured, this one really depicts the utter inhumanity of the military and its treatment of those who went off to be senselessly destroyed in Vietnam. Ketwig's hardships don't even begin to encompass his under-fire conditions--though these and other atrocities are everywhere; the fear, the justifiable criteria for fragging officers, the bloodshed and torture. Yet the most harrowing moments portray the utter incompetence of the military-industrial complex itself. Ketwig and others have their lives put in danger over the pettiest, most selfish, cowardly political behavior I've ever read about the military. And it is positively nauseating to think of the US government in 1967 blindly sacrificing young generations of skilled men and women for such a lost cause, and then covering everything up. The injustices are impossible to ignore, so Ketwig does not come across as a crybaby or an unpatriotic man. He shows more bravery during his tour of duty than any of his sadistic training could have possibly prepared him for. And as for the ranking officers and other "leaders" he encounters who hide in their tents or behind enemy lines, the less said the better. One hell of a book. The author's descriptions of Thailand also measure up as fascinating, both culturally and politically.
• 
  Brian

  I just finished reading this book and I found it to be the best memoir written about the Vietnam war. It wasn't written by a combat soldier, but yet it had the perspective from a combat side and a support side of the war. The author was trained as a mechanic and then a welder, but was still in the trenches with the combat soldiers. It tells of the anguish of Vietnam Veteran who was looking for answers, but it took years to find and yet some have still not been found for the war or the anguish many veteran's feel to this day.
• 
  Jo Besser

  Probably one of the hardest books for me to get through to date. The subject matter just destroyed your soul.
  
  I can't even begin to describe what Ketwig wrote, I could understand his thoughts and feeling. Heck, I agreed with him a lot of the time.
  
  It's been a long time since I've almost cried over the ending of the book. When Ketwig made reference to Lynda Van Devanter, I let out a gasp. Since I knew the women he was referencing.
  
  There are really no words to describe this book, other than pick it up and read it for yourself.
• 
  Jack McCabe

  A hard look at the long lasting effects of the Vietnam war
  
  The war has been over for many years but as a Vietveteran I can always feel its presence, lurking. There have been a multitude of books written about the Vietnam war but not quite like this one. This one captures what the war was like, its horrors and after effects for the men and women who served. I wish our politicians would read it before sending our you out to die.
• 
  Russell Macphail

  excellent book
• 
  Peter Jones

  Its lit fam
• 
  Tiffany McLeod

  I don't usually like autobiographies but this boom was amazing. Sheds light on the Vietnam war
• 
  Juanita

  Review: 26And a hard rain fell by John Ketwig.
  
  A GI 19s experience of the war in Vietnam. Every person who served in Vietnam has their own traumatizing story to tell. Many people have put this author down and claim he is a whiner. I was only about ten when the war in Vietnam was going on and I have heard many stories some worst then others so why condemn this one soldier for his two years he gave to his Country. Why not read his accounts, even if some are flawed? He saw it the way it was to him. Other authors and Vietnam Vets have documented well the haze of depersonalization that characterized the U.S. Military in the middle 1960s. The trauma of such transformation is hard to understand unless one has 1Cbeen there, done that 1C.
  
  Ketwig was in a stage of confusion when he signed up for another year in Thailand. He wanted to go home but fear at that time held him back. He felt another year was a good choice for him. It became therapeutic for him and allowed him to shut his demons away without confronting them at that time. Then the day came when he goes home to suffer the dislocation common to many Vietnam Vets. In time he makes a life, but his demons never rest. At least not until he begins to tap this story out painfully, page by page 26..
  
  I was intrigued, interested and curious to read about the two years John Ketwig spent in Southeast Asia. It is a story of one man 19s war. It 19s a valuable recollection of what war does to human beings. This story is even more critical today, as Iraq and Afghanistan blaze across our national consciousness. This book was well written and should not be downsized.
  
  A statement in the book that stays with me: Is a human being really in control of his/her own destiny? Were we victors, or victims? What is a person 19s duty to his Country? To his/her God? To his/her fellow person? Which has priority? It is difficult to agree upon the answers to those questions; it was more difficult in Vietnam. The average age of the American fighting person in The Nam War was nineteen. The average age of the American fighting person in World War II was twenty-six. A lot of persons spent a year in Nam and came home and couldn 19t legally drink a beer. We debate teenage drinking, teenage voting, and teenage marriage. Vietnam haunts America. When will we debate teenage war?
  
• 
  Fifi

  Lengthy and boring. Read if you wish to understand the Vietnam War from an American soldier perspective. Will be reading The Vietnam Sympathizer next for a comparison.
• 
  Michael Burnam-Fink

  This is one of those Vietnam War memoirs that rises above the rest. Ketwig was basically a kid when he enlisted in 1967, hoping to avoid getting drafted and sent to Vietnam the only way an ordinary kid from upstate New York could. The recruiter promised him he'd be fixing trucks in Germany, but he wound up at a military scrap yard near Pleiku, with 365 days of war to survive.
  
  There are the standard scenes; ambushes, terror, dead bodies, Army brutality, whorehouses and drug-fueled benders. Ketwig witnessed a few truly atrocious things, including Green Berets executing a prisoner with a firehose, and truly bizarre, like getting stoned with NVA soldiers on the night Bobby Kennedy was shot. But what makes this book exceptional is the emotional honesty; Ketwig bleeds on the page, working out a decade of suppressed memories, and the cultural context. The boys who went to Vietnam, and they definitely went as boys, were a generation raised on TV, muscle cars, the Beatles and the Space Race. They were people with tremendous dreams, fed into a meat grinder of a war to justify lies. Ketwig has used this book as the foundation of a career speaking out against the military-industrial complex, and he is brave and right to do so.
  
  Since I do read a lot of these, one thing that separates out Ketwig as a volunteer is that he had a second year in the Army, which he spent in Thailand. Thailand in 68 and 69 seems like a fascinating place, and Ketwig explored and appreciated the culture as much as is possible, while also getting his head in some kind of shape to come back to America. Too many of these books are just that one year, And a Hard Rain Fell explains how that year matters in the course of a life.
  
  Music recommendation:
  The Electric Flag
• 
  Tyler Y

  The book ...and a hard rain fell: A GI's True Story of the War in Vietnam By: John Ketwig was an exhilarating war story, it induces the “True war story” feeling that author Tim O'Brien talked about in his book The Things They Carried . During the book John came across some Green berets, on a supply run, and they were interrogating 3 Vietnamese women. Throughout the course of this interrogation the women were beaten, battered, and abused since they refused to reveal any information. Until finally they took out a fire hose and… for lack of a better term she exploded. This was the most gruesome part of the book and he repeatedly references it throughout the book. The real property of this book that i like is the introduction of Lin. Lin was a Malaysian prostitute that John had hired while he was on R&R. The two of them went all around town and quickly fell in love with each other. John had planned to marry Lin and take her to the United States and live with her for the rest of their days. But, Lin had other plans. Lin broke up with him over the phone when he had returned to the States. That is when John found his new girlfriend, who he ended up marrying and having a family with. It just astounds me that through all the bloodshed, there can still be a glimmer of love in all the chaos.