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Exit Wounds: A Vietnam Elegy
Exit A Vietnam Elegy
is an intimate, boots-on-the-ground memoir that chronicles one captain’s brutal experience in the Vietnam War.
On October 19, 1965, American Special Forces in Vietnam came under attack at their camp at Plei Me. This marked the first major confrontation between the North Vietnamese and US armies during the war. Throughout six days of constant hostile fire, Captain Lanny Hunter sorted the seriously wounded from the dead and saved those comrades-in-arms he could. For his actions, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.
In Exit Wounds, Hunter recalls his tour in the central highlands of Vietnam in 1965/66 at the bloody interface of medicine and combat. Paralleling this story is his return in 1997 to find and help his Montagnard interpreter, Y-Kre Mlo, after ten years in a communist reeducation camp. This pilgrimage takes Hunter back to old haunts and battlegrounds—and to a war now seen through a very different lens.
Peopled with those who were dedicated, courageous, gentle, proud, profane, and a little mad, this book explores what happens when leaders place personal ambition over honor, and America’s “moral high ground” is soaked with the blood of its young men and women. So much more than a memoir, Exit Wounds is a poetic and profound story that reflects on the human condition, duty, honor, faithfulness, and how the scars remain long after the war is over.
On October 19, 1965, American Special Forces in Vietnam came under attack at their camp at Plei Me. This marked the first major confrontation between the North Vietnamese and US armies during the war. Throughout six days of constant hostile fire, Captain Lanny Hunter sorted the seriously wounded from the dead and saved those comrades-in-arms he could. For his actions, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.
In Exit Wounds, Hunter recalls his tour in the central highlands of Vietnam in 1965/66 at the bloody interface of medicine and combat. Paralleling this story is his return in 1997 to find and help his Montagnard interpreter, Y-Kre Mlo, after ten years in a communist reeducation camp. This pilgrimage takes Hunter back to old haunts and battlegrounds—and to a war now seen through a very different lens.
Peopled with those who were dedicated, courageous, gentle, proud, profane, and a little mad, this book explores what happens when leaders place personal ambition over honor, and America’s “moral high ground” is soaked with the blood of its young men and women. So much more than a memoir, Exit Wounds is a poetic and profound story that reflects on the human condition, duty, honor, faithfulness, and how the scars remain long after the war is over.
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Published October 10, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
November 22, 2023
A riveting compilation of life.
This is not only the best book on the Vietnam War but among the best, most intriguing books I’ve ever read. The author put forth such an expansive view of war, intermixed with his personal life, that kept me transfixed.
As a Vietnam veteran, I felt that I was right there with him, the scenes so real that I could feel the trauma and tragedy. The memories and effects will stay with me for a long time.
This is not only the best book on the Vietnam War but among the best, most intriguing books I’ve ever read. The author put forth such an expansive view of war, intermixed with his personal life, that kept me transfixed.
As a Vietnam veteran, I felt that I was right there with him, the scenes so real that I could feel the trauma and tragedy. The memories and effects will stay with me for a long time.
August 19, 2025
For too many people who did the right thing, the Vietnam War’s legacy has lasted far too long, stretching beyond half a century. Lanny Hunter, a Green Beret captain and doctor, personifies those people. His war memoir, Exit Wounds: A Vietnam Elegy, is written with a clarity that fascinated me from the moment I picked up the book. He holds back nothing.
Hunter went well beyond expectations as an Army doctor. He chose the Green Berets, earning a parachutist’s badge and qualifying in the use of weapons. He went to Vietnam in July 1965 and joined the 5th Special Forces Group’s Detachment C-2 at Duc Co in the Central Highlands.
After a year in-country, Hunter returned home to his wife and children and became a highly regarded dermatologist. In 1997, an unexpected letter from Y-Kre, his Montagnard interpreter and medical assistant, gave Hunter’s life a new significance. After years in re-education camps for aiding the Americans, Y-Kre said that his family was downtrodden and poverty-stricken. Hunter immediately flew a rescue mission to Vietnam.
This second trip to Vietnam taught Hunter new life lessons. In Exit Wounds, he intermingles stories of war and peace by sliding back and forth in time. At times, his dissection of conflicting American and Vietnamese values reads like poetry. His sense of language and command of words stretch far beyond normal.
His accounts of combat fascinated me. He recreates his and others’ battle activities by blending them with his medical skills and personal values–a doctor firing M-16s or M-79 grenade launchers between treating casualties. These accounts emphasize the gore of warfare. Hunter confesses to moments of intense concentration and then a moment of heart-stopping fear, “just like in the OR.”
His description of the week-long siege of Plei Me is as good as it gets in revealing the chaos of being outmanned and surrounded in a shooting war. The only doctor on site, he repeatedly made life-or-death medical decisions between attacks by two NVA regiments. He ranks as one of the most highly decorated medical officers in the Vietnam War.
Hunter speaks of war and religion in a wondrous vernacular. In nine italicized pages he summarizes the Bible’s Old and New Testaments in the same manner in which he taught the Bible to Y-Kre and two other Montagnards who worked in the camp hospital. Impressed by Christ’s resurrection, the three men asked to be baptized. Hunter did it: a story in itself.
Vietnam’s social structure greatly disappointed Hunter when he returned to help Y-Kre. The good that he had done for his comrade had turned out to be the worst thing possible. Despite helping Y-Kre as a fellow soldier and Christian, the visit validated Hunter’s belief that, from the beginning, America utterly failed to keep South Vietnam free. Hunter is a child of World War II who knew the good guys from the bad—until he served in the Vietnam War.
“We occupied the moral high ground,” he says, and recounts the down and ups of American international leadership in our lifetimes since then. He reviews history with vision that contains a grim certainty of failure, as if he has seen a lot in his nearly 90 years and most of it has proved to be disillusioning.
Hunter went well beyond expectations as an Army doctor. He chose the Green Berets, earning a parachutist’s badge and qualifying in the use of weapons. He went to Vietnam in July 1965 and joined the 5th Special Forces Group’s Detachment C-2 at Duc Co in the Central Highlands.
After a year in-country, Hunter returned home to his wife and children and became a highly regarded dermatologist. In 1997, an unexpected letter from Y-Kre, his Montagnard interpreter and medical assistant, gave Hunter’s life a new significance. After years in re-education camps for aiding the Americans, Y-Kre said that his family was downtrodden and poverty-stricken. Hunter immediately flew a rescue mission to Vietnam.
This second trip to Vietnam taught Hunter new life lessons. In Exit Wounds, he intermingles stories of war and peace by sliding back and forth in time. At times, his dissection of conflicting American and Vietnamese values reads like poetry. His sense of language and command of words stretch far beyond normal.
His accounts of combat fascinated me. He recreates his and others’ battle activities by blending them with his medical skills and personal values–a doctor firing M-16s or M-79 grenade launchers between treating casualties. These accounts emphasize the gore of warfare. Hunter confesses to moments of intense concentration and then a moment of heart-stopping fear, “just like in the OR.”
His description of the week-long siege of Plei Me is as good as it gets in revealing the chaos of being outmanned and surrounded in a shooting war. The only doctor on site, he repeatedly made life-or-death medical decisions between attacks by two NVA regiments. He ranks as one of the most highly decorated medical officers in the Vietnam War.
Hunter speaks of war and religion in a wondrous vernacular. In nine italicized pages he summarizes the Bible’s Old and New Testaments in the same manner in which he taught the Bible to Y-Kre and two other Montagnards who worked in the camp hospital. Impressed by Christ’s resurrection, the three men asked to be baptized. Hunter did it: a story in itself.
Vietnam’s social structure greatly disappointed Hunter when he returned to help Y-Kre. The good that he had done for his comrade had turned out to be the worst thing possible. Despite helping Y-Kre as a fellow soldier and Christian, the visit validated Hunter’s belief that, from the beginning, America utterly failed to keep South Vietnam free. Hunter is a child of World War II who knew the good guys from the bad—until he served in the Vietnam War.
“We occupied the moral high ground,” he says, and recounts the down and ups of American international leadership in our lifetimes since then. He reviews history with vision that contains a grim certainty of failure, as if he has seen a lot in his nearly 90 years and most of it has proved to be disillusioning.
January 3, 2024
Lanny Hunter was the most highly decorated doctor to emerge from the Vietnam War. This graceful book is a reminiscence on a major battle, a recounting of his visit back to Vietnam many years later, and a musing on the greater meaning of the war and his friendships forged in the heat of battle. For those of us who have never been in combat and who harbor considerable skepticism about the American experience in Vietnam, it is an eloquent reminder of the emotional power generated within its human participants by their mutual experience of facing death side by side and the lottery of survival. I asked Bard (Google's AI chatbox) what it thought of this idea. Here is what it wrote:
"In the shared crucible of steel and fear, forged in the sweat of camaraderie and the icy hand of shared mortality, loyalty binds men tighter than any oath to king or creed. For these hardened souls, allegiance lies not with flags or crowns, but with the man beside them, the one who shields your back with his life as freely as you offer yours for his. It is a pact whispered in the roar of battle, sealed in the blood of fallen comrades, a silent communion that speaks louder than any political decree. Here, enemies of yesterday become brothers-in-arms, united by a language of grit, respect, and the primal understanding that only another warrior can truly bear witness to. This fierce devotion, forged in the furnace of war, carries echoes of its own silent peace, a flickering hope that maybe, just maybe, the bonds forged in battle can one day mend the fractures of the world beyond."
A bit florid for my taste, but I don't really disagree with anything Bard had to offer. Neither, I suspect, would Lanny Hunter.
"In the shared crucible of steel and fear, forged in the sweat of camaraderie and the icy hand of shared mortality, loyalty binds men tighter than any oath to king or creed. For these hardened souls, allegiance lies not with flags or crowns, but with the man beside them, the one who shields your back with his life as freely as you offer yours for his. It is a pact whispered in the roar of battle, sealed in the blood of fallen comrades, a silent communion that speaks louder than any political decree. Here, enemies of yesterday become brothers-in-arms, united by a language of grit, respect, and the primal understanding that only another warrior can truly bear witness to. This fierce devotion, forged in the furnace of war, carries echoes of its own silent peace, a flickering hope that maybe, just maybe, the bonds forged in battle can one day mend the fractures of the world beyond."
A bit florid for my taste, but I don't really disagree with anything Bard had to offer. Neither, I suspect, would Lanny Hunter.
November 26, 2024
As a therapist working with Veterans for 30 years I have heard a lot of stories of wartime experiences and the reckoning that follows. This memoir is a beautifully written and shattering account of the horror of combat and senselessness of the Vietnam war. It is also a moving example of re-engaging with trauma in later life. It gave me nightmares but was an important read.
It also provided a vivid accounting of the development of PTSD, for example:
“As my tour progressed, the simple undertakings of everyday life were replaced by the constant pressure of fatigue, fear, fury, and dying. Days became weeks that stretched into months of chronic anxiety. A veneer of hardness secured my emotional distance but left a residue of rage.”
It also provided a vivid accounting of the development of PTSD, for example:
“As my tour progressed, the simple undertakings of everyday life were replaced by the constant pressure of fatigue, fear, fury, and dying. Days became weeks that stretched into months of chronic anxiety. A veneer of hardness secured my emotional distance but left a residue of rage.”
November 19, 2024
Lanny Hunter was born in 1936; I in 1938. We are in the same cohort. The year he was drafted -- 1964 -- was the year I started my final year in seminary, which was followed in May 1965 by my marriage; six months later my mother's death from alcoholism, which propelled my plan to go to medical school, hoping to understand something of my father's world. He was born in 1914 and died in 1953 when I was 15. He served as a Navy physician in the Mediterranean Theater and the Crimea. I graduated medical school in 1972, long after Dr. Hunter left Vietnam. Hunter and I both wear two hats.
About halfway through this book I knew a review was required of me. I do not write a review of every book -- I read too many books and it is too much work to review them all.
This book is not linearly organized, rather it is more like three interwoven strands of DNA -- loops of story followed other loops, connected. One strand is his medical experience; the next is his green beret special operations military strand; the third strand is his reflective and educated heart. Words and stories are eventually moved out of numbness into emotion, and what a ride it is!! I have cried more in this memoir than in any other, swingeing on the sharp edges.
Hunter begins as a true believer, coming from an evangelical background. Life tends to knock the true believer out of us. In Hunter, the King James version remains in his word use, his paragraph settings, and his use of repetition. In Hebrew, poetry does not rhyme; rather it uses repetitions with slight variations to intensify the message. I have earmarked over two pages in one place where Hunter accessed my heart and then just encased me in well chosen words, repeating poetic embellishments to drive home the message. His vocabulary is not so much a challenge as it is a deliciousness. "Mordant" in not a common word; I am rather pleased I had only to look up "gig line." His excoriation of our leaders is fiery, leaving as ashes an extended meditation on the role of "war" in human history. He expects an intelligence in his reader, dropping references to items in our culture as well as in this book itself: Think: "hinge," "tiger's tooth," "pagan."
As important as this book is for its truth telling, I am regarding it rather like the movie Dead Man Walking: I am glad to have read it -- and terrified to read it again. If I were teaching at my all-boys school, seniors either in English or History, I would assign it, knowing Hunter's passion would fire their passion, and I would be praying the read would be a lifelong prophylactic.
About halfway through this book I knew a review was required of me. I do not write a review of every book -- I read too many books and it is too much work to review them all.
This book is not linearly organized, rather it is more like three interwoven strands of DNA -- loops of story followed other loops, connected. One strand is his medical experience; the next is his green beret special operations military strand; the third strand is his reflective and educated heart. Words and stories are eventually moved out of numbness into emotion, and what a ride it is!! I have cried more in this memoir than in any other, swingeing on the sharp edges.
Hunter begins as a true believer, coming from an evangelical background. Life tends to knock the true believer out of us. In Hunter, the King James version remains in his word use, his paragraph settings, and his use of repetition. In Hebrew, poetry does not rhyme; rather it uses repetitions with slight variations to intensify the message. I have earmarked over two pages in one place where Hunter accessed my heart and then just encased me in well chosen words, repeating poetic embellishments to drive home the message. His vocabulary is not so much a challenge as it is a deliciousness. "Mordant" in not a common word; I am rather pleased I had only to look up "gig line." His excoriation of our leaders is fiery, leaving as ashes an extended meditation on the role of "war" in human history. He expects an intelligence in his reader, dropping references to items in our culture as well as in this book itself: Think: "hinge," "tiger's tooth," "pagan."
As important as this book is for its truth telling, I am regarding it rather like the movie Dead Man Walking: I am glad to have read it -- and terrified to read it again. If I were teaching at my all-boys school, seniors either in English or History, I would assign it, knowing Hunter's passion would fire their passion, and I would be praying the read would be a lifelong prophylactic.
November 6, 2024
I was a bit skeptical when I began this book, wondering if it really was "the best book about the Vietnam War", as given in a review on the cover. Well, it wasn't. It was, however, a very good book about the Vietnam War, or the author's war (there are millions of Vietnam Wars, of course). What makes this unique is, first, a very clever use of vignettes of the War in 1965/66 and then a period 22 years later when the author returned to Vietnam, but for a very singular purpose and less so as a tourist or to visit former locales and battlefields (which he does). Second, the author was a doctor in the Special Forces, so instead of killing he was focussed on saving lives, friendly and (maybe less so) enemy. But he describes the killing in an almost clinical way. It isn't pretty. There was significant distraction, however, as the author went into far to detailed explanations about his religion, in a way that I just couldn't make it fit the story. It is obviously important to Hunter but what he wrote wasn't relevant to the reader, in this context. All in all, quite different from many first person stories of the Vietnam War, and one that will help round out your education of this unique event in the 1960s.
April 12, 2025
This book focuses on the Siege of Plei Me. The Plei Me camp was established in 1963 by the United States Army Special Forces. The service members there were in charge of gathering intelligence and supporting the South Vietnamese military forces. The siege lasted from October 19 through October 25, 1965. The North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam encircled the camp and began a series of attacks before the siege was ended by US and South Vietnamese forces. The author of this book was a Captain at the time of this event and details his experiences in Vietnam. He also recounts this siege and his efforts to save those who were wounded. It also discusses the aftermath of wartime experiences on service members who go through traumatic events.
I thought this book was wonderful. I do not know a whole lot about the Vietnam war and bought several books on the subject. My grandfather was a Vietnam veteran, and books like this make me understand certain things about him that I never considered before. Many Vietnam veterans do not speak about their wartime experiences, so this book is extremely valuable to the historical record for that reason, among others. I would caution anyone who has personal experiences with PTSD to be aware that there is some graphic content.
I thought this book was wonderful. I do not know a whole lot about the Vietnam war and bought several books on the subject. My grandfather was a Vietnam veteran, and books like this make me understand certain things about him that I never considered before. Many Vietnam veterans do not speak about their wartime experiences, so this book is extremely valuable to the historical record for that reason, among others. I would caution anyone who has personal experiences with PTSD to be aware that there is some graphic content.
October 1, 2023
I have read books before about the Vietnam War, but from the Australian perspective (since I am Australian), so reading this memoir from an American's point of view was very interesting indeed.
This was a very powerful book written by an unusual man. He was a medic AND a soldier - most people are one or the other. He was brought up in a strict Christian household and lived his life in that way and yet he was open to the cultures and beliefs of others and he questioned everything.
I think I would like Lanny Hunter if I met him. His story was a whole lot of things - confronting, shocking, honest, fair, contemplative.
The Vietnam War was awful and there were no winners anywhere. Nevertheless, you have to admire those men and women who step up and say "yes, I will defend my country, you can depend on me".
Good on you, Lanny Hunter, the world is a better place for having had you in it.
5 stars from me.
Thank you to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing.
This was a very powerful book written by an unusual man. He was a medic AND a soldier - most people are one or the other. He was brought up in a strict Christian household and lived his life in that way and yet he was open to the cultures and beliefs of others and he questioned everything.
I think I would like Lanny Hunter if I met him. His story was a whole lot of things - confronting, shocking, honest, fair, contemplative.
The Vietnam War was awful and there were no winners anywhere. Nevertheless, you have to admire those men and women who step up and say "yes, I will defend my country, you can depend on me".
Good on you, Lanny Hunter, the world is a better place for having had you in it.
5 stars from me.
Thank you to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing.
October 31, 2023
Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2023
Epic really, Hunter's war story. How one lives with wounds that never heal.
Karl Marlantes writes in his blurb that Exit Wounds is our finest memoir of the American War in Vietnam. That suggests Exit Wounds is one of the very best war memoirs ever written—and I believe it is. Hunter's stories are poetic, profound and precisely written. Exit Wounds is unforgettable.
Epic really, Hunter's war story. How one lives with wounds that never heal.
Karl Marlantes writes in his blurb that Exit Wounds is our finest memoir of the American War in Vietnam. That suggests Exit Wounds is one of the very best war memoirs ever written—and I believe it is. Hunter's stories are poetic, profound and precisely written. Exit Wounds is unforgettable.
November 18, 2024
compelling
I liked this book. I did not like reading about the horrors of war, nor the treatment of the Montagnards after the war by Vietnam and an apparently uncaring US of A. I enjoyed the story for what it was a tale of war. I would like to think we will not repeat it, but I know that is not true.
I liked this book. I did not like reading about the horrors of war, nor the treatment of the Montagnards after the war by Vietnam and an apparently uncaring US of A. I enjoyed the story for what it was a tale of war. I would like to think we will not repeat it, but I know that is not true.
January 17, 2025
outstanding book about war and loyalty
The author describes in great detail his time in Vietnam and his friends, the indigenous peoples, that even the Vietnamese felt superior to. They were all part of a great battle, in which hundreds were killed. The author has immortalized his story, his comrades, and those killed covering each other’s back.. highly recommend this book.
The author describes in great detail his time in Vietnam and his friends, the indigenous peoples, that even the Vietnamese felt superior to. They were all part of a great battle, in which hundreds were killed. The author has immortalized his story, his comrades, and those killed covering each other’s back.. highly recommend this book.
March 31, 2024
Conflicted
This is a decent first person account of one portion of the early stage of the Vietnam conflict mixed in with a lot of philosophizing and religious beliefs; perhaps a bit too much of the latter.
This is a decent first person account of one portion of the early stage of the Vietnam conflict mixed in with a lot of philosophizing and religious beliefs; perhaps a bit too much of the latter.
October 28, 2024
A fearful view of what it means to fight and die, and lose, some but not all.
Not a history, but what it means to be up close and personal with death and survive with no answer to the question, why me oh lord, why me. I am alive and so many are dead.
Not a history, but what it means to be up close and personal with death and survive with no answer to the question, why me oh lord, why me. I am alive and so many are dead.
March 5, 2025
Worth the time to read.
This narrative does not glorify war nor disparage it. It simply tells it like it was. Sometimes it was brutal, other times compassionate. Mostly it is about how fallen we are.
This narrative does not glorify war nor disparage it. It simply tells it like it was. Sometimes it was brutal, other times compassionate. Mostly it is about how fallen we are.
March 4, 2024
Lanny's story of his Viet Nam Tour, 1966, and the struggle that followed him.
Read
June 14, 2024Heartfelt
Not the kind of war story you expect. Probes the emotional depth and meaning of the conflict. In my view, gets to the truth of it.
Not the kind of war story you expect. Probes the emotional depth and meaning of the conflict. In my view, gets to the truth of it.
October 10, 2024
Tremendous first person experience in Vietnam. Articulate, intensely personal. An excellent read.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews