At a time when many young men his age were completing their first year of college, playing in a band, enjoying a beach vacation, or earning money from a summer job, Roanoker John Ketwig, at 19, patrolled an ammunitions depot in Vietnam. In the darkness beyond, an unseen enemy lurked, intent on killing him and his comrades in arms.
Vietnam veteran and author John Ketwig will launch his second and newest book, “Vietnam Reconsidered: The War, The Times, and Why They Matter” on Saturday, June 15, with a book signing at Goose Creek Studio in Centertown Bedford. Goose Creek is located at 302 Court Street. Time of the event will be 2-4 p.m.
Signed, first edition books will be available for purchase for $24.95. There will be light refreshments, including adult beverages, as well as entertainment.
“I was laying in the mud, wishing I could disappear. If this was manhood, I preferred to remain a child,” recalled Ketwig, 71, a retired automotive company manager, of his harrowing wartime experience. Breakfast was the best meal of the day because you made it to another day.”
Ketwig, who said he’d never written more than a letter, determined in 1982 to put his recollections of Vietnam into words for his wife and children in “And A Hard Rain Fell,” his first literary effort about the war in southeast Asia. After 34 years and 27 printings of the bestselling title, “Vietnam Reconsidered” will capture readers again.
Much of what had been televised and published, he felt, did not tell the truth about Vietnam, and how and why the U.S. got involved there.
It was a relief, he said of the first book, “to settle my thinking, to put words to it. My peers and I did not want to take part in it, we were there against our will. I wanted to survive. There is not a patriotic side to it. It was terribly frightening.
“Within a night to two, they sent me out as a guard. I wondered what was I doing there? I Marked off every day. I’ve got to get through this and survive. You’re brought up to known what is right and wrong. To see what was really happening, it was not right. If was had loaded B52s with seeds and food, it would have done a lot more good than napalm and cluster bombs.”
About the Writer:
Rebecca Jackson is a veteran newspaper person/journalist based in Bedford County, VA. A native of California and an M.A. graduate of Arizona State University, she has a passion for pets (animals), good food/cooking, music, wine, horticulture, photography and travel.
