Tewksbury - Just short of two years ago, Eric Giardina’s life came to a crossroads.

Only a year out of high school and short on cash, Giardina was attending classes at Middlesex Community College and working part time at a pizza shop, when his car suddenly broke down. With no money to fix it, and his car being the only way of getting to class, Giardina knew he needed a fast change.

Little did he know this change was about to transport him to a war-torn country where life or death situations were a part of daily life.

“I was kind of stuck in a rut,” said the lifelong Tewksbury resident, describing the moments that led up to his decision. “Everything just kind of fell through at the same time and I decided to get a feel of the world first and do something young people don’t do nowadays, so I decided to join.”

After weighing his options, in April 2006 Giardina decided enlisting and donating the next eight years of his life to the U.S. Army was his best option.

 Now, almost two years later and after eight months of training, Giardina is a specialist in the third infantry division of the U.S. Army, dealing with Iraqi security and fixing weapons for his fellow soldiers, south of Baghdad in the province of Babil.

This week, Giardina is on leave, relaxing in his father’s Tewksbury home — wearing civilian clothes, beard stubble visible, drinking water from a cooler.

But he knows he can’t get too comfortable with civilian life because in five days this 20-year-old will be suited up in almost 60 pounds of camouflage and steel-toed boots, 5,800 miles away in Iraq, with no running water and nothing but his music to help him escape the daily trials of war.

Giardina said he didn’t have much time to adjust to army life. After enlisting, he packed necessary belongings into a tiny box, and was assigned to the most-deployed division in the army, the third infantry division. He was shipped off for eight months of intense training for combat fighting at Fort Knox, Ky., Fort Stewart, Ga. and national training in California. After a year of garrison training as a weapons mechanic, Giardina was sent off base, training in Kuwait before landing for deployment in Baghdad.

Raised with a passion for music, especially singing, Giardina said he still turns to his music as a calming source. As the days of his deployment inched closer, Giardina said he never saw a loss of love in the world around him.

“I noticed as soon as we were deploying, it seemed like everybody my age was getting married right off the bat and having babies,” he said, adding that while the one thing he misses the most overseas is affection he took it upon himself to cut off all ties before his deployment.

“For me,” he said, “that was a big deal, and a big step.”

While he severed emotional ties in the U.S. in an effort to remain in survival mode, Giardina took his music with him. 

“Music is my life,” he said. Before he left, he recorded four self-written songs in a Needham recording studio. “[One day] I want kids my age or younger to turn my music on when they are having a rough time and say, ‘I’m just going to get away for a bit and relax and collect my thoughts.’”

While Giardina hesitates to discuss the hardships he experienced in his daily life in Iraq, the struggles he and his fellow soldiers endured while being separated from their families remains in his mind.

“Their families can’t take it,” he said. “I try to talk to my comrades all the time and keep their spirits up without reminding them of home all the time. You try not to think about it. You want to think about it a little bit, but you try not to overwhelm yourself with it.”

It’s that strength and mindset that has led Giardina through the past five months and awarded him recognition for his marksmanship.

Camaraderie also brings the soldiers together, knowing that at any moment they must be prepared to fight.

“You become real good friends and you have to trust people, because it’s a life or death situation,” he said. “There are always people in the world you are never going to get along with, but you have to forget all that and be an adult and say, ‘Hey, this is what we have to do and we have to accomplish it.’”

Giardina, who works detail daily on base security with Iraqis, said he feels the U.S. presence in Iraq is still needed and appreciated by the Iraqi people.

“I think what we are doing for the Iraqis is a good thing,” he said. “I see them every day and I talk to them. They love us but there is always that one that will cause the whole thing to look bad. We’re trying to do our best. I think we’re helping. We’re doing the right thing. We’re just regular kids, husbands, wives and daughters trying to do a job and protect people over there.”

Giardina said he makes a daily effort to tell the Iraqi people he encounters that he appreciates their presence and support.

“I don’t know how they do it because they’ve seen war for so long, [but] they come up with smiles on their faces,” he said.

Giardina said he feels there is a need for a strong U.S. presence to remain in Iraq for several more years.

“I think we need to stay for a long time. Just the way things are right now; we need to continue to help them. I know it costs a lot of money, but we should stay. They need more guidance and more training and we’re slowly doing that. We’re rebuilding the country. That doesn’t take four to five years, it takes 10 to 20.”

Giardina said he feels his time in Iraq has changed him for the better. Iraq provided Giardina with a new outlook on life, he said, and he no longer takes anything for granted.

“I don’t think of Massachusetts as the whole world anymore,” he said. “Everybody in America should see another country. Even if it’s only a day. They should stop worrying about ‘Sweet Sixteen’ and all those shows on MTV and other reality TV. That’s just not real. It doesn’t have to be Iraq, but they should just see how people live.”

Giardina will return to Babil on March 4 to finish his tour; another 10 months of deployment.

“Once my boots hit that ground, it’s game on again,” he said.