this book was mostly just sad. war does horrible things to people on all sides.

i liked how the author was just honest about what he felt while he was in vietnam. the way he was trained and treated in the army completely desensitized him to all this violence and he did things and witnessed things that were so horrible that looking back he doesn't know how he did it all. but he couldn't think of how to do differently at the time.

he says at the begininng that he wrote this book because he wanted to understand what happened to him in vietnam and he wanted to be able to explain it to his wife and children. the book read very much like that. sometimes it just went on a little to long about things, which i'm sure was just part of the cathartic experience of the author.

overall, i'm glad i read the book, even though it was quite depressing.

Read it trying to understand what my father experienced in the war.

so sad what these young men had to endure/lives forever changed by senseless war

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.

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.

Great book about Vietnam and beyond.

Great book Great Writer

I had the great honor of hearing Mr. Ketwig speak at my college a few years back, and after his talk I got to meet him and buy his book directly from him (on impulse, I might add.) It was an amazing and eye-opening experience, and I'm so glad that I got to hear Mr. Ketwig's story. When I eventually got to reading ...and a hard rain fell, I found the book is amazing, if a bit hard to bear at times because of the honest frankness with which Ketwig articulates his time in Vietnam. It's an important, compelling and evocative read which I highly recommend.

This book is very good. I would recommend it to anyone who likes war or history. It is very emotional but it IS worth reading

It’s the most honest, brutal and yes, interesting book about the war that I’ve read… but I was much less enamored of the sex, massages and Diamond ring in Penang and Thailand. I skimmed that half of the book.

John Ketwig was 19 years old when he was drafted and sent into the meatgrinder of the Viet Nam war in 1967. He gives a vivid and unsparing account of his year there, the death and horror, the pointlessness, and never-ending nerve-fraying stress of it all. He pulls no punches. If you want to know what the experience of an army grunt in that place and time was like, this is your book.

After his year was up, feeling unable to immediately return to "The World", Ketwig did a tour in Thailand. He got to know Thai people and immersed himself as much as possible in their culture. This section of the book tells the reader about the dirt-poor peasants working their rice paddies, the incredible pleasure palaces where any kind of fetish or desire can be fulfilled, and his own loneliness, homesickness, and effort to find balance and a place in the world after all that he has seen and the ways in which it all has changed him. Very highly recommended

Mr. Ketwig memoir is an important addition to what has been written about the Vietnam War. His account is from the perspective of a young enlisted man. It is not a glorified account. His memoir reminds us that the call to war should not be taken lightly, that officers are not perfect, and we owe our vets proper support.