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Book Review: "...And A Hard Rain Fell"By Pete Zastrow...and a hard rain fell We debate teenage drinking and teenage voting, says John Ketwig in his book, ...and a hard rain fell; how about teenage war? A good question, and one, which Ketwig comes back to in various forms. Not a novel, not a journal or a diary, ...and a hard rain fell began as Ketwig's attempt to put something on paper to describe, for his young daughters, the experience of Vietnam. He expected, he says to write 15 or so pages. Eighteen months later was ...and a hard rain fell; Ketwig describes the process as being like squeezing pus from an infected wound. After reading Ketwig's book it isn't too hard to see how the experience of putting the events on paper could have made the wound of Vietnam better, just as post traumatic stress rap groups have, for years, given vets a chance to talk about their experiences. In the process of talking and sharing what happened the veteran can somehow get out the infection that the experience has caused; squeezing pus from a wound is exactly the right way to describe the healing that takes place. This is one fine book. It's familiar and comfortable, in one sense, because so many of the things that Ketwig experienced are so like what every other Vietnam vet went through. (It isn't easy to write a book, which covers the many different experiences; after all, the GI who spent a year in the field humping the boonies did not have the same experience as one who sat behind a typewriter at MACV headquarters with a carpet on the floor. Ketwig, a mechanic who occasionally drove convoys, managed to have a little of both experiences in his year.) Much will come flooding back, emotions and events that are long forgotten. While few of the events he describes in the book were earthshaking, the emotions they trigger are intensely familiar. Who can forget the boredom that was a year in Vietnam (with, of course, a few moments of often unwanted excitement); or the deep, quick and still tentative friendships that grew up among people who might never see one another again; or the utter frustration of a military bureaucracy where there were still lifers who believed shined shoes were the most important thing going; or the sense that, in the last few days in country, every round that might fall anywhere nearby was aimed right for you? Intense feelings recur though the events described are now 15 to 20 years in the past. Ketwig can recreate these emotions by writing an intensely honest book. Early in the book he volunteers to drive in a convoy (the last time he volunteers; incidentally). By reacting right, driving through an ambush, which blows up the truck in front of him, Ketwig performs the kind of heroic act, which happened all the time in Vietnam and which seldom if ever got recognized by medals or awards. Yet he does not write this experience like a hero; unlike other Vietnam recollections, this book does not try to make the author's experience one of a kind. Again and again Ketwig finds the detail, which makes an experience come vividly to life. Occasionally Ketwig gets away from the firsthand and repeats some of the old "truths" about the war. Perhaps it is true of any war, but for sure Vietnam had its share of rumor, half-truths and total lies that were so often repeated that they took on a life of their own. Take "Black Syph Island," for instance. Ketwig mentions, without much comment, the supposed super strain of VD contracted in Vietnam. In his version of the story, the unfortunates who get this disease were sent to Okinawa and listed as MIA's. I remember first hearing of the dreaded "Black Syph" during a hygiene lecture by an E-8 at Ft Riley, Kansas, during a week-long "get-ready-to-go-to-Vietnam" class. Looking back I think he believed in this mysterious island off the coast of Vietnam where victims rotted in obscurity. Let's take on this story; first, there was no Black Syph and no Black Syph Island. MIA's are just the - -MIA. But it's not hard to see where the story came from. In the days before penicillin, VD could cripple an army, so the military would use whatever would work to scare people away from sexual contact with the enemy. And the stories hang on even when VD can be cured with some ease. In fact, there could probably be a fascinating book written on the history of the military's attitudes toward VD but stories of "Black Syph" probably didn't keep many GI's away from Vietnamese women. This kind of story is not especially dangerous. Other rumors are more dangerous by far. Disproving any of the stories, which came out of Vietnam, is difficult; it is always possible that something happened once and that one instance has turned into thousands. Ketwig talks of the child, explosives strapped to his back, who wanders into a crowd of GI's and explodes. This kind of story is always devastating since it carries with it the implicit point that the Vietnamese (or at least the National Liberation Front) had such low regard for human life and for children that a child would be use. If the VC used children in that way on a regular basis, it is hard to imagine that they would have won the allegiance of large portions of the Vietnamese population. It is a simple untruth with a great appeal to many people (it is easy to hate an enemy who uses children like that) and was cleverly pushed by the U.S. military. Or there's the equally devastative story about peace protestors around every airport when vets returned from Vietnam. Ketwig mentions the story of the Marine who survived for 13 months in Vietnam only to be killed, presumably by protestors, when he got off the plane. This story, usually told in the form of the vet being spit on when he got off the plane, is another propaganda effort, showing that the protestor and the vet had no common interest—which just plain was not true. And, for many of us, had a protestor spit on us after we got off the plane we would have tried to tear out their throats. ...and a hard rain fell is a fine book to help explain Vietnam to someone who was not there. Ketwig is full of questions similar to the teenage war question mentioned at the beginning of this review. None of the questions are treated lightly, yet the book is a long ways from being a political tract. It is far too humorous, tender and lively for that. Ketwig did not come home after Vietnam but instead spent a year in Thailand in hope of marrying a woman he met on R&R. That didn't happen, but Ketwig grew very close to the people with whom he lived. His humaneness keeps coming through. What it all amounts to is that neither Ketwig, nor any of the others we meet in the course of the book, belong in a war like Vietnam. That is the final statement that the book makes; it is a good one. And it is deeply true. Read the book and you will see why. Peter Zastrow
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