In the nostalgia time that comes at the end of December every year I remember my past life and what that past means for me now. In this.town full of military veterans I think a lot about my Army life, the combat I saw in the Vietnam War, the long twisting road I have walked since I came home from t he war, and the many other veterans who have walked that road with me. Christmas time is a powerfully special time, making every memory more real, making every reliving so vivid that it seems the past has usurped the present. For me, Christmas is flashback time. I arrived at Fort Carson in October 1968. Winter that year came early, and fresh from the tropics I wasn’t ready for it. But no excuses. I was soon playing war in the wilderness south of the Main Post, infiltrating the VC Village, a ridiculous collection of plywood shacks built to train troops for the war. No matter that the exercise was completely anti-climactic for me and the other Nam vets. Combat veterans who have just been doing the real thing are not good campers when forced to act it out. The snow and cold made it even more foolish. But the scenery was beautiful. The  mountains, the 12-point mule deer bucks and shy does, the tawny bobcats, the furtive coyotes, the hawks and pine blue jays were a pleasure to watch. We would ride on the tops of the armored personnel carriers, the APC’s, “tracks” we called them, shivering in the almost useless Army winter gear, until the decrepit aluminum-armored things would sputter and die, which happened frequently, and it was time to hoof it back to the company area. And so we marched, the heavy M14 rifles, obsolete weapons I thought I would never see, slung over weary shoulders. When we limped back into the company area the First Sergeant came out of his office and told me that I was not going home on leave for Christmas. Don’t get me wrong. I liked the Army. It was better than living in the podunk south Texas town, full of dust, heat, boredom and aunts, uncles, cousins, and high school friends who were never satisfied until I told them a war story, the scarier the better. That town relished the war. Loved the war, sending many of its sons to fight. That’s typical of Chicano/Mexican culture. It was enough to make you feel schizophrenic, going there after traversing the country that hated the war so much. In the present, I have attempted to tell my war experiences, to draw PTSD veterans into the circle, knowing that there is healing in the telling. If only they would open up. But in this place, so full of other veterans, it is my stories that must seem anti-climactic to the men at the Vet Center, to the polite listeners in the groups, or to the cheerfully inebriated at the VFW.  Other memories come crowding in. The poverty we endured when I was a kid. The year that my dear old mother went out in the yard, found a dried-out black, but graceful branch from the Texas ebony tree, spray-painted it a glistening white, hung a few ornaments and the Bethlehem star on it, and, behold, a Christmas tree. No toys that year. Just the ever-present menudo, tamales, Mexican chocolate and the creamy atole. But I was happy. Poverty didn’t matter. I was at home, secure in myself and in my place, strong in my identity, speaking only in the vernacular Spanish. Incorrect, uneducated Spanish. But I didn’t know that.  And then my WWII veteran father went back into the Army and was promptly sent to Germany. And we had to join him. There was a long train trip  from the outermost limits of the country, from south Texas, more Mexican than American, to the heart of America, New York. That trip was an education in itself. I learned English. I grew a dual identity. I remember the transformation. That kind of thing is called a “seminal moment.”  The Antlers Hotel, decorated for the Christmas holiday, is seen in this December 1955 photograph. The Antlers opened in June 1883; it was built by city founder Gen. William Jackson Palmer and so named because it housed his extensive collection of deer and elk trophies. A history on the hotel’s website notes that the original hotel had modern conveniences such as a hydraulic elevator, central steam heat and gas lights. The Antlers was destroyed by fire in 1898, rebuilt and reopened in 1901. It remained in operation until 1964, when it was torn down and rebuilt, reopening on March 20, 1967. It is now The Antlers, A Wyndham Hotel. Then we boarded the rickety DC-6 airplane with the large gaps in the floorboards, the white-capped waves of the north Atlantic visible below and the cold wind whistling into the cabin. Then Frankfort. The German train  to Munich was toy-like but the sleeper cars were luxurious. I fell asleep watching the snowflakes drift down around the antique lamp posts of the bahnhof.    Joe Barrera, Ph.D., is the former director of the Ethnic Studies Program at UCCS. He teaches U.S. Military History, and Mexico/U.S. Border Studies. He is a combat veteran of the Vietnam War. ...read more read less