Good hard look at the Vietnam War and it's ramifications from a soldier who was there.

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

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.

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. :-)

So good! This book gives you an idea of what it's really like to serve in a war.

This very good book reminds me of my Vietnam Era experience, so many parts hit home with me.

Great book. One of the few that I have read multiple times.

tThe 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.

I think this is the first Vietnam memoir I ever read. What struck me is the total sense of disbelief that the baby boomer Ketwig had at getting drafted and being compelled to do things he did not wish to do. NOT a sense of entitlement at all, just bewilderment and then growing resentment. He wrote the book over a decade after he came home, and he was well able to focus on his unfocused feelings at that time. Very nice work!

Excellent Vietnam novel.

one of the best vietnam books i have read, and i have read a lot

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