By Matt McLaughlin

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.)

It’s October and there is yet another funeral for a fallen comrade.

Yet another friend who will never be heard from again. Yet another soul that succumbed to the struggle that has consumed so many young lives over the past last five years.

Sadly, this struggle and loss has nothing to do with a foreign war.  It does not involve, at least directly, the two years of my life spent in Iraq.  It isn’t about soldiers dying heroically in battle. The struggle I speak of is experienced constantly by the people in my hometown of Somerville.

I have spent the past five years of my life in the Army, moving sporadically between Iraq and up and down the U.S. east coast, with the occasional trip home to Somerville. While I greatly look forward to any homecomings, I am reminded almost each time I return why it is I left to begin with. In the past five years I have lost more friends in the battlefield of Somerville than I have in two tours of Iraq, including one tour with an infantry brigade. 

I have been witness to roadside bombs, small arms fire, severed limbs and mutilated bodies. Yet I return home to bury another friend and can’t help but feel I had it easy compared to my three brothers who have suffered wounds from their own fallen. 

I look at my friends, still young and full of potential, with demeanors of hardened veterans.  I see an entire community repetitively in mourning and am grateful I only had to deal with the burden of a nation of people trying to kill me daily. I would rather deal with that than be in the shoes of those who have been a pallbearer for someone they spent their entire lives with.

Brian Liberatore was the first funeral in half a decade I was around to attend.  I followed my brothers through the now formulaic custom of paying tribute to the fallen at Kelly Park, the playground where many of Somerville’s lost souls spent their youth. Candles were lit not only for Brian, but Nicky Peters, another youth who passed weeks earlier prior.

Nicky joined the Army as well and was not killed in war, but at the hands of violent thugs near Fort Hood, Texas. I didn’t know Nicky well, but I knew of his life, both at home and abroad. Although I was mourning Brian’s death greater, I felt Nicky’s death was possibly more tragic because he had escaped the grip of his hometown. Like the many other veterans I know from Somerville, I’m certain he joined for, amongst many reasons, to escape.

Immediately after that thought, I realized the irony of the situation: joining the military, going to a third world country to fight and possibly die, was considered an escape to me.

I began to analyze the thought process, not only of myself but of the majority of servicemen I’ve met, that brought so many to enlist.I have very rarely met anyone who joined solely for patriotic reasons. Even those who professed belief in the cause still had other self-motivating reasons for joining.  The overwhelming majority joined for personal reasons: college money, a stable job with benefits, adventure in a respectable profession, and escape from an undesirable life. In other words, they joined for an opportunity that was not afforded to them in their regular lives.

I look at this war and the events that led me to fight in it and am reminded of the historic  role the lower class has played throughout the history of war.  I think of the young men during Vietnam who were drafted because college students were exempt from service, and how the nation only protested when children with trust funds were finally called up. I think of Civil War veterans who were hired by the affluent to fight in their stead. I think of Irish soldiers fighting for the British crown in World War I, dying on foreign land while they themselves were oppressed. I think of slaves forced to battle other slaves for the sake of their masters.

There are, of course, varying extremes when considering those who for centuries fought for a cause that is not their own.  The young men and women from Somerville who enlist to escape their circumstances have it far better than those who were physically forced to fight.  But the historic theme of the have-not’s fighting and dying while the haves speak of sacrifice and patriotism remains true to this day.

I am proud of my service in the Army and to this country.

People often ask me if it was worth it or if I ever regret joining.  It was worth it and I never regret it because I look at the alternative and ask myself "what choice did I really have?" 

I am proud of my time in the Army, but I also can’t help but be saddened and frustrated that, like tens of thousands of others, I felt the need to throw myself into imminent danger just to have the opportunities that others in America take for granted.  I get enraged thinking about my friends and family who are backed into a corner by society and then face the choice of destruction by their surroundings, their own hand, or by higher powers who hold a carrot in front of them and get some to commit to indentured servitude; a life that will greatly help them in the future, provided they live.

I have just last week been discharged from the Army. Hopefully I can help others who were in the situation I was in 5 years ago Others like me so they can have opportunities without feeling compelled to fight a battle far away they may not even understand.

I am thankful I survived my five years and will no doubt look back at those days with fondness. I learned a lot during my servitude that will benefit me in the future. However, I also learned the ultimate truth about every war since civilization began: wars are fought by the poor and won by the rich.