Branning and Medina are the 10th and 11th members of their battalion to die since it arrived in Iraq last month.

Thirty-one service personnel with significant Hawai'i ties have died in Iraq or Afghanistan since the start of the war in Iraq in March 2003. In addition to the 11 Kane'ohe-based Marines and sailor, the Army's 25th Infantry Division (Light) at Schofield Barracks has lost nine soldiers in Iraq and seven in Afghanistan. Also, four soldiers from Hawai'i serving with other units have died in Iraq.

Tia Steele, Branning's stepmother, said she and others in her family had been piecing together bits of information gleaned from Branning's phone calls to track the Marine's progress through Iraq.

He called her this month, to tell her that eight 1st Battalion, 3rd Regiment, Marines had been killed by a car bomb, but she shouldn't worry.

"I just want you to know I'm OK," he said.

That was the last time she heard from him. After that, she followed his progress through Fallujah by listening to the reports of a national journalist embedded with the unit. Fallujah sounded awful, but she thought David might be OK.

"There were lots of Marines there," she said, "and the casualties were relatively low and I thought that would work in his favor. ...

"It didn't work out that way."

Gregory Medina said his son wrote of a foreboding in his letters home from Iraq.

"He was scared. He said in the back of his mind he didn't think he was going to make it home," Medina said yesterday.

Steele said she had been taken aback by the news her stepson had joined the Marines in the first place.

"He was raised in a family of pacifists, basically," she said. She said that although they opposed the war, she; David's father, Daniel Branning; and his sister, Annie, supported David's decision. It would give him a chance to decide what he wanted to do in life, and it would give him money for college when he was ready.

She said she was surprised some people couldn't understand that it was easy to support the troops and oppose the war.

"Shoot," she said, "David was just 21 years old. He was just a baby. Look at the list of casualties. They are all just babies. ..."

Sharon Kostic, a Marine wife at Kane'ohe, said the deaths in the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, have taken their toll among the unit's families.

"Everyone is upset and grieving," she said. "Not just for our own, but for the others. I think that is pretty much the mood of the Islands. There have been so many lost."

Kostic said after eight Marines in the battalion were killed late last month, the wives who live on base were shaken.

"Wives at the memorial service kept asking me how often I thought we would be doing this, because they didn't think they could take it again," she said.

The emotional toll can be just as tough or worse on the parents of men and women in war zones, she said.

"These are their babies," she said.

Lynn Holland-Kelley, mother of Kane'ohe-based Marine Cpl. Niles Holland, said the news of a death in the unit is heart-stopping.

"You wait and wait to get word it is not yours," she said last night from her home in Claremont, N.H. "When it comes, you take a breath for a moment, but then you are back in the reality of worrying again, because you never know."