Ketwig - --and a hard rain fell: a GIs true story of the war in Vietnam

Praise for

and a hard rain fell

A magnetic, bloody, moving, and worms-eye view of soldiering in Vietnam, an account that is from the first page to the last a wound that can never heal. A searing gift to his country.

Kirkus Reviews

Some of Ketwigs passages radiate sacramental luminence. History this is not. Truth it is. Rest assured, I read every word.

Houston Chronicle

Ketwig enables the reader to relive with him the heartbreak and trauma of seeing close friends die, the devastating cultural shock of returning home, and the insanity and cruelty of war.

Penthouse, The Vietnam Veterans Advisor, William R. Colson, August 1985

Solidly effective. He describes with ingenuous energy and authentic language that time and place.

Library Journal

has the immediacy and raw power of the best war novel, yet the reader can never escape the stark realization that this is a true story. Reading and a hard rain fell drains the spirit. Mr. Ketwigs prose is beautiful, his story vivid and harsh and incredibly realistic.

Baltimore Sun

Perhaps as evocative of that awful time in Vietnam as the great fictions. Ketwig loathes the army, and his loathing of its aims and texture produces a wild surreal account at its best as powerful as Celines dark writing of World War I.

Washington Post

Reading and a hard rain fell is like bearing witness to the meticulous excision of a malignant tumor from a soul. It is a devastating book, shot through with horror and poetry and pain.

Seattle Times

Ranks among the more eloquent and powerful statements about the war.

Globe and Mail, Canada

The wide-eyed narration makes this a strong, moving book.

The Rochester, NY Times-Union

John Ketwigs and a hard rain fell was especially helpful in understanding Vietnam from a GIs point of view.

Robert James Waller, Acknowledgments, Border Music, Warner Books, 1993.

I could only take John Ketwigs and a hard rain fell in small doses. I found it searing, excruciating, almost too much to bear.

Philip Berrigan

and a hard rain fell is a book that must be read.

Chris Noel, Armed Forces Radio personality in Vietnam, actress, and Vietnam veteran advocate

I heartily recommend this book to Americans who want to understand.

Jan C. Scruggs, President of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, and the vet who made the Memorial a reality

and a

hard

rain

fell

(20th Anniversary Edition)

and a

hard

rain

fell

(20th Anniversary Edition)

A GIs true story of

the War in Vietnam

John Ketwig

updated edition with a

new afterword by the author

Copyright 2002, 2008 by John Ketwig

Cover and internal design 2002, 2008 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

Cover photo Corbis Images

Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systemsexcept in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviewswithout permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

Published by Sourcebooks, Inc.

P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

(630) 961-3900

Fax: (630) 961-2168

www.sourcebooks.com

Originally published in 1985 by MacMillan.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ketwig, John.

--and a hard rain fell : a GI's true story of the war in Vietnam / John Ketwig. -- 20th Anniversary ed.

p. cm.

1. Ketwig, John. 2. Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American. 3. Soldiers--United States--Biography. 4. United States. Army--Biography. I. Title.

DS559.5.K47 2008

959.704'38--dc22 [B] 2007040386

Printed and bound in the United States of America

VP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is dedicated to John Lennon and Cornelius Hawkridge, each of whom, in his own special way, dared us all to imagine.

This book is based on true incidents. Names (except public figures) have been changed and characters described in the book are composites.

Contents

Illustrations

12. Dead Vietcong

3. Our hootch

4. Vietnamese kids watching a convoy leave Dak To

56. Scenes from the convoy to Kontum and Dak To

7. Trucks on the convoy

8. Armored personnel carrier after it hit a mine

9. Montagnards near Pleiku

10. The author with Montagnard child

11. Aboard the Thai train to Penang

12. The author being blessed by a Buddhist monk

13. The temple of Phi Mai

14. Another Thai temple

15. The dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Introduction

Ididnt set out to write a book. It was 1982, fourteen years after I had last set foot in Vietnam, and thirteen years after I returned to The World. I had a family and a career. Id never written more than an occasional letter to the editor in my life. My twisted insides had spawned ulcers. The nightmares were more frequent. I needed to get Vietnam out into the open, but I couldnt talk about it. Not after all those years.

I think history will, if given half a chance to be objective, regard the Vietnam era as the apogee of the American dream. To most of us who were there, Vietnam was the defining event of our generation, the biggest thing that would ever happen in our lifetimes. Realizing the importance of the experience, the huge changes that the war crafted into ones emotional makeup, it is difficult to let the genie out of the bottle. Suppose one evening after the kids are in bed and the dishes are done, the wife just casually suggests, Tell me about Vietnam. A reasonable request, I suppose, but where do you begin? It is so huge, so complex and important, you know that to pry up the lid and let just the first few particles escape will trigger an explosion, a mighty dirty geyser of recollections and traumas that have been festering inside far too long. To tell about my Vietnam experiences the first time was not unlike squeezing the pus out from an infected wound. The time was right for me, back in 1982. For others, the time hasnt been right to this day. They shrug, hunch their shoulders, grab a cold beer from the fridge, and change the subject. There will be a better time, they tell themselves.

It just always seems that there will be a better time.

In January of 1982, there were no books about Vietnam on the shelves at our house. I could not imagine divulging the emotions that the subject stirred in me, and I never imagined that others might have written about the war. Our house has always been home to an extensive library, but at that time there were no references to Vietnam. Today, in the early moments of the twenty-first century, thousands of books have been published to expose, investigate, and interpret every aspect of the Vietnam tragedy. This book, my personal story, is being republished, all of seventeen years after it originally appeared. The introduction that I wrote in 1982 hardly feels right today, but I feel compelled to draw from it. What can this book possibly say that hasnt been said a thousand times before?

One Saturday night in April of 1982, I sat down to write out the story of my experiences in the Vietnam War. I wanted my wife to know all I was feeling. I hoped someday my kids, just toddlers at that time, might read it and understand. I expected to fill fifteen or twenty pages; eight months later I had filled more than three hundred fifty. Every character was typed by my right index finger, which grew an enormous, tender callus. My left thumb contributed capitalizations. I was obsessed, banging away on our old manual typewriter until three or four every morning, and carrying on at my job well enough to win awards. I listened to the old sixties music, closed my eyes, and relived some of the most profound experiences of my life. There were no questions or cross-examinations; there were far too many tears and emotional explosions. I cant explain where some of the passages in this story came from. They had to emerge. I am satisfied that this book accurately describes what I saw and felt in Vietnam.