Richard Hertel served in the Army as a personnel clerk and chapel organist in Phu Loi during the Vietnam War from 1969 to 1970.  Upon returning home, he started a long journey of divorcing his wife, separating from his daughter and coming out as a gay man.

Terry Hairrell of Waukegan, Illinois served in the Army from 1967 – 1969.  While on combat missions in Vietnam, he was awarded a Purple Heart.  His war experiences scarred him deeply; but with help of a loving wife, he has recovered to make meaning of his experiences with those he served.

Richard Friemel served in the Air Force as an airplane mechanic during the Vietnam War and was exposed to Agent Orange which he believes caused his heart condition.

Bon Bui was born in Quảng Bình, Vietnam in 1946 and fled to the South during the war.  He became a South Vietnamese Marine during the war and was trained by US forces in the United States. After Saigon fell in 1975, he become a prisoner of war for 10 years before finally relocating to America under an asylum program. Bui recounts the atrocities of war first hand.  

While the Vietnam War raged on, 18-year-old Thomas Boaz from Decatur, Illinois was living as an exchange student in post-WWII Germany.  Required by law to register for the draft, he did so as a non-combative conscientious objector and later became a nonpolitical pacifist.