Maroa, Ill. ? The Ridlen twins seemed to always be together, at church, on the softball field, even in the recruiter’s office when they enlisted with the Illinois National Guard.

The brothers were stationed with the same unit in Iraq when a truck rigged with explosives detonated Sunday next to a convoy, killing Army Spc. Jeremy L. Ridlen, 23.

Guard officials wouldn’t say if his identical twin, Jason Ridlen, was with the convoy at the time, but he is expected to accompany his brother’s body home to Illinois.

Friends said Tuesday they worried about how he would deal with the loss.

“They just clung to each other. You can’t talk about one without talking about the other,” said Diane Daggett, one of the brothers’ teachers at Maroa-Forsyth High School, where the twins graduated in 1998.

The same year, they joined the Illinois National Guard and were assigned to the 1544th Transportation Company.

Jeremy Ridlen was part of a convoy traveling a supply route in the Fallujah area Sunday when a dump truck rigged with a bomb exploded, according to the Illinois National Guard.

The boys grew up in nearby Maroa, a central Illinois town of about 1,600 residents 30 miles south of Bloomington. Both were students at Illinois State University when their unit was activated last year.

Major Tim Franklin, a Guard spokesman, said it wasn’t unusual for relatives to serve in the same military unit.

When a soldier from Wisconsin was killed in Baghdad last month, her older sister was serving in the same unit and her twin sister was also in Iraq. Under Pentagon policy, when a soldier is killed while serving in a hostile area, close family members may request noncombat assignments. Both surviving Wisconsin sisters were reassigned.

The Rev. Marlin Jaynes, who is acting as a spokesman for the Ridlen twins’ family, said it would be up to Jason Ridlen whether he returned to a combat zone in Iraq.