Fort Riley ? Five Fort Riley soldiers who died in a single day this week in Iraq were an assorted lot, all in their 20s but with backgrounds as varied as their hometowns from Idaho to Pennsylvania.

One joined the Army looking to learn a trade. Another planned to return home this spring to his newborn child, only to be part of the deadliest day for their Fort Riley base when a homemade bomb exploded Wednesday beneath their M-113 in Habbaniyah, Iraq.

The historic Army post has lost 35 soldiers since the war began last year, nearly double the number of deaths during the Persian Gulf War.

The Defense Department identified the soldiers as 1st Lt. Doyle M. Hufstedler; Spc. Sean R. Mitchell; Spc. Michael G. Karr Jr.; Pvt. Brandon L. Davis; and Pfc. Cleston C. Raney.

All were members of the 1st Engineer Battalion, 1st Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division stationed at Fort Riley, Kan.

Davis, a carpentry and fishing enthusiast who graduated from western Maryland’s Fort Hill High, was just 20 when he died about six months after he went to Iraq, having joined the Army hoping to learn a trade.

“He was my baby. I have three kids, and he was my baby,” said his mother, Jackie Weatherholt.

Weatherholt, of Cresaptown, Md., said she last spoke with the Army private March 20 by telephone. Part of their discussion? The dangers of the high-risk areas into which he was always being sent.

“I said, ‘Watch your back, Brandon,”‘ the mother recalls.

Davis’ father, Jeffrey A. Davis, said Brandon loved being a soldier “and he was happy to be doing what he did.”

Hufstedler’s pregnant wife, Leslie, had been waiting for his return to Charlotte, N.C. While her husband was off to war, she worked as a substitute teacher in a church nursery school and tried to distract herself with garden work.

Hailing from Abilene, Texas, Doyle Hufstedler, 25, met his wife at Texas A&M University three years ago, proposing to her in the end zone at halftime of a football game. Hufstedler went on to join the Army as a second lieutenant.

The Hufstedlers celebrated their first wedding anniversary in August when they learned Leslie, 24, was pregnant. Less than a week later, Doyle Hufstedler was sent off to Iraq.

By telephone, the couple agreed on a name for their baby. Doyle Hufstedler was working to arrange a 15-day leave to hold the baby.

Raney, 20, died in the military his family had tried to get persuade him not to join — or at least postpone his enrollment. “But once we realized the strength of his convictions,” his family said in a statement this week from their home in Rupert, Idaho, “the family put our own fears on the back burner to support his sense of purpose and overwhelming need to make a difference 100 percent.”

Raney’s death, his survivors said, “has left a deep heartache that makes it difficult to swallow or even breathe. Cleston was a quiet, respectful young man not yet old enough to buy his first beer or to put a coin in his first slot machine if that would have been his inclination, yet he was old enough to vote and to give his life for the numerous freedoms each of us as Americans take for granted each day.”

A native of Youngsville, Pa., Mitchell, 24, leaves behind his parents, two brothers and two sisters. Mitchell’s parents were told Wednesday of their son’s death and declined to comment.

Teachers at Youngsville High School in northwestern Pennsylvania, where Mitchell graduated in the late 1990s, were discussing Mitchell’s death, assistant principal Ken Fitzsimmons said.

Karr was 23 and of San Antonio.

About 4,600 Fort Riley soldiers are in Iraq. At least 597 U.S. troops have died in Iraq since the war began March 20, 2003.

— David Dishneau and Rebecca Boone of The Associated Press contributed to this story.