Peter Sorensen snapped this photograph of a heavily damaged church from the back of a truck traveling north on QL1 (Highway 1) to a forward fire support base in the fall of 1969 in South Vietnam. "I remember being struck," Sorensen recalls, "by the irony of a church being caught in the crossfire of two warring armies." Peter and his wife Elizabeth Sorensen, mother of filmmaker Soren Sorensen, later used an image of this church a Christmas card in 1971 with the caption, "Peace on Earth."  

Having begun his tour as a combat engineer in the fall of 1969, Peter Sorensen was reassigned to the U.S. Army's 31st Public Information Office in the spring of 1970. "I was taking pictures on and around forward fire support base Bronco where I was stationed when I encountered this infantryman, or 'grunt,'" Sorensen says. "You can see that he has two or three other envelopes in his pocket, so he had clearly been at it a while, catching up on letter-writing to family and friends." He adds, "I was moved by his intensity, and the solemnity and serenity of the scene."

Peter Sorensen, one of the film's subjects and father of filmmaker Soren Sorensen, leaning against a five-ton dump truck and smiling after the safe conclusion of a two-mile mine sweep during the fall of 1969 in South Vietnam. Sorensen remembers, "You can tell it's early in my tour because my uniform hasn't faded, I'm not sunburned, and my mustache hasn't grown in yet."

Peter Sorensen took this photograph at the end of his tour in October of 1970 while standing in line with a group of Americal soldiers awaiting processing for return to the United States. "I was on my way home," Sorensen remembers. "The guys leaning on the railing in the background are leaving either later that day or the next day, and looking on enviously. I don't remember much of anything about this other than the fact that I was going home."

Calm Frenzy: One Man's Vietnam War, a collection of Loring Bailey's Vietnam-era letters, AVAILABLE NOW at CalmFrenzy.com.