Army Spc. Matthew P. Steyart, 21, Mount Shasta; Killed by a Roadside Bomb

Matthew P. Steyart, 21, joined the Army two years ago, excited about the prospect of traveling and eventually getting a college degree with government help.

His mother, Nancy Patrick, said she was relieved when her son was deployed to Afghanistan instead of Iraq, believing it might somehow be less dangerous.

The reality turned out to be far different.

“It doesn’t matter where you are,” Patrick, 46, said in an interview. “It is unsafe and unsettled out there.”

Spc. Steyart, of Mount Shasta, Calif., was killed Nov. 22 when a roadside bomb exploded near his Humvee while he was on patrol in southern Afghanistan, according to the Department of Defense.

He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 508th Infantry Regiment in Vicenza, Italy.

Patrick said she was mopping her kitchen floor at 6:30 a.m. on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving when uniformed officers rang her doorbell. Her family was about to leave for a trip to Arizona to visit her eldest child, a daughter who is also in the military.

“I felt like I was reliving a scene in a movie and thought, ‘Somebody wake me. This can’t be,’ ” she said.

Patrick was told that her son’s body was “unviewable” and that he died of lacerations to the face, neck and torso. She said he will be cremated, and on his urn will be the words, “You only live once,” an inscription he requested in a military form that soldiers must fill out in case of death.

The second of four children, Steyart loved to hunt, fish and drive four-wheel-drive vehicles, his mother said. He considered eventually working for a fish and game service, she said.

He lived in Hemet until his father died and the family moved to Mount Shasta. As the elder son, he tried to assume a fatherly role to his younger brother and sister, his mother said.

Steyart attended his brother’s baseball and football games and took his sister hunting with him. He also surprised his mother by getting permission to return home from the Army for her wedding nearly two years ago to Richard Patrick, his stepfather.

Steyart was proud of the work he was doing in Afghanistan, his mother said. He told her the Afghans were friendly but poor, and he said he frequently gave them money.

“Normally he was 5-foot-9 or 5-foot-10,” his mother said, “but when he put on that uniform, he was 6-foot-10. He was so proud.”

Among the items Steyart carried with him to Afghanistan was a Bible that his grandfather kept during World War II. It was a gift from an aunt who thought it might keep him safe.

Funeral services were Saturday at St. Anthony’s Catholic Church in Mount Shasta.