Pickering was far from his small-town home in southern Illinois and even farther from his Marine Corps friends in Hawai'i where he was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment.

Woods, from Jacksonville, Fla., was a Navy corpsman attached to the 3rd Marine Division Detachment based at Marine Corps Base Hawai'i at Kane'ohe Bay. His family was told early Thursday that he was killed in an assault on insurgents.

No information was available last night on Holder, who also was with the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment.

In Harrisburg, Ill., where Pickering graduated from high school, government flags were lowered to half-staff, said his father, Carl Pickering, a 43-year-old corrections officer and volunteer firefighter.

His son is being remembered as a hero, he said.

Marine pallbearers carried the flag-draped casket of Marine Lance Cpl. Jeremy Bow yesterday after services at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Lemoore, Calif. Bow, 20, was among seven Hawai'i-based Marines killed Oct. 30 in a suicide car bombing in Iraq. John Walker • Associated Press

Thirty-seven service members — 24 soldiers, 12 Marines and one sailor — with Hawai'i ties have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan or Kuwait since the start of the war in Iraq in March 2003. Sixteen soldiers died in Iraq, seven in Afghanistan and one in Kuwait.

Seven Hawai'i Marines were killed on Oct. 30 near Fallujah when a suicide car bomber detonated explosives next to a troop truck.

More than 13,000 Hawai'i-based soldiers and Marines are deployed in the region with another 1,000 Marines also on their way to Afghanistan.

The grim news arrived at the Pickering home on Veterans Day, when two uniformed Marines from St. Louis knocked on the front door at 5 a.m.

They told Pickering that his son was dead, but could not tell him how he had died.

"We don't know anything yet," the father said. "They couldn't explain to me what had happened except that it happened in Fallujah. We are assuming it was a gunshot, but we are not sure."

Aaron Pickering joined the Marines right out of high school. He had been on the track and golf teams. He also had scholarship offers.

"He could have gone anywhere he wanted to," his father said. "This is what he wanted to do."

Aaron Pickering saw life as a series of challenges, his father said.

"He was a very physical person," he said. "Anything he'd done, he'd done it all out. If it was not a challenge, he would not do it."

In the Marines, he chose the infantry. Boot camp was grueling, but the hardest part was being away from his family, Pickering's father said.

Marine Corps Base Hawai'i in Kane'ohe was his first assignment. He was sent to Iraq with the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, and had been in the country less than a month.

Aaron Pickering last called his father Nov. 1 to tell him the Marines were preparing for a serious fight.

He knew it would be dangerous, his father said.

"He told me it would be a little while before he would be able to call me again," Carl Pickering said. "He wouldn't elaborate. He kept his emotions a lot on the inside. He didn't want to worry you."

Of course, his father worried anyway. When the fighting began in Fallujah on Monday, the elder Pickering was glued to his television set.

"Not anymore," he said. "Not since this."

Woods was a star football player at Ed White High School in Jacksonville. He joined the Navy soon after graduation in 2000.

"He was a joy," Woods' mother, Carolyn, tears streaming down her cheeks, told WTLV-TV. "They took my child, but I'm proud."

Woods was in the fourth year of a six-year enlistment. He had a 3-year-old daughter, Israel, who is with her mother, also in the Navy, based in Virginia.

Carolyn Woods said she wasn't told how her son died. But she said that when he joined the Navy, they both understood the risks and that it wouldn't always be a peaceful job.

"I gave him my blessing when he joined," Woods said. "He died for his country and other people."