Shrapnel Wounds: An Infantry Lieutenant's Vietnam War Memoir

Shrapnel Wounds is the combat memoir of Lieutenant Tom Crowley, an enthusiastic and highly trained U.S. Army enlistee and Officer Candidate School grad who enters combat in Vietnam in mid-1966. Highly regarded by his infantry platoon and strongly encouraged by his superiors to become a professional soldier, Crowley almost inadvertently examines the system by which career officers are shepherded through to higher and higher rank—and increasingly rejects that system over the course of his one-year combat tour.

Praise for Shrapnel Wounds

“Of the many accounts of day-to-day life in the field in Vietnam, few have matched, and none have surpassed, Tom Crowley’s account of his experience as an infantry platoon leader during the Vietnam War.

"What he does extraordinarily well is reveal the depth of personal commitment a junior officer can have for men under his command and their welfare. It is a personal story profoundly told. A brilliant effort.”

Dwight Jon Zimmerman
President, Military Writers Society of America
New York Times bestselling author