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Austin, Texas -- One was an 18-year-old private who enlisted in the Army last summer after graduating from high school; another was an Army lifer, less than two years shy of retirement, who might easily have avoided combat had he so chosen.

There was a 19-year-old pastor's son, who played football in high school, and an Army veteran's son, 22, who played basketball.

Four days after its triumphant announcement that Special Forces troops had rescued Pfc. Jessica Lynch from an Iraqi hospital, the Pentagon provided a somber epilogue early Saturday by announcing the identities of eight of nine dead American soldiers also recovered during the operation.

One of them, Pfc. Lori Ann Piestewa, was the first American servicewoman killed in the war. A Hopi, she was among the handful of Native American women serving in the U.S. armed forces.

"Our family is proud of her -- she is our hero," her brother Wayland Piestewa told reporters outside the family's home in Tuba City, Ariz. "We're going to hold that in our hearts. She will not be forgotten."

Seven of the eight were in Lynch's unit, the 507th Maintenance Company from Fort Bliss, Texas, and all were part of a rear-guard convoy ambushed near the southern Iraqi town of Nasiriyah two weeks ago in circumstances that remain murky.

Until Saturday, all had been classified as "Duty Status-Unknown Whereabouts, " the Army's designation for missing soldiers. Now all eight are listed as "killed in action."

A ninth body recovered from the hospital, also believed to be an American serviceman, has not been publicly identified. Several thousand Iraqi soldiers and civilians are believed to have been killed.

One of those identified by the Pentagon Saturday was Pvt. Ruben Estrella- Soto. An 18-year-old mechanic's son, he was born just across the border in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and grew up in a hardscrabble neighborhood east of El Paso that received running water only last year. He enlisted shortly after graduating from high school last spring. A popular high school football player,

he became a naturalized citizen several years ago.

Master Sgt. Robert J. Dowdy was 38, a passionate runner and marathoner who was within two years of retiring from the Army. According to a family friend, he could have twice avoided the site of the ambush.

Last fall, Dowdy told his wife Kathleen that he had accepted an order to ship out to Kuwait in the place of another soldier in a Patriot missile unit.

That assignment might have kept him in Kuwait for the duration of the war. But about a month ago, said the family friend, Dowdy was offered a promotion to first sergeant if he would transfer to the 507th Maintenance Co., another unit from Fort Bliss.

Another longtime soldier whose remains were identified Saturday was Sgt. George Edward Buggs, 31, a soft-spoken man and the father of a 12-year-old boy.

A member of the 3rd Infantry Division Support Battalion, he had spent 10 years in the Army and was leaning toward making it a career, according to his wife, Wanda.

Their son, she said, was "worried about his dad not seeing him grow up."

Another of the more experienced members of the 507th was Chief Warrant Officer Johnny Villareal Mata, 35, whose wife, teenage son and young daughter live in Pecos, 200 miles east of El Paso.

There were younger soldiers among the dead as well, newly enlisted men whose stunned parents had barely digested the fact of their children being in the military.

One was Pvt. Brandon Ulysses Sloan, 19, a former high school football player, whose father, Tandy Sloan, had just finished attending another prayer vigil for his son at the Historic Greater Friendship Baptist Church in Cleveland when he was notified by the Army.

Another was Spc. James M. Kiehl, 22, an Army veteran's son who enlisted three years ago. He left a young wife, Jill, who is expecting the couple's first child, a boy, next month.

Although the Pentagon has not confirmed the circumstances of the deaths, some relatives believed the soldiers had been executed by the Iraqis. At the home of Norman and Arlene Walters in Salem, Ore., the parents of Sgt. Donald R.

Walters, 33, a recorded telephone message told callers:

"We regret to inform you we have received official confirmation of the death of our son, Sgt. Donald Walters, who was murdered while held captive by Iraqi forces of Saddam Hussein . . ."

As the families of the dead grieved, Lynch's parents were on their way to Germany to see their daughter, who is recovering from her wounds in an American military hospital there.

At the airport in Charleston, W.Va., Lynch's mother, Deadra, said she could not wait to see her daughter. But when her father, Gregory, was asked about the other troops in her unit, he said, "Our hearts are really saddened for her other troop members and the other families."

Then he choked up, and a family spokesman led them away.