The list does not include 103 U.S. soldiers killed during Operation Desert Shield, between Aug. 2 and Jan. 16.
Pennsylvania lost more lives than any other state - at least 18.
"They were special people; every one of them was special," said Annette Brown, the mother of a Spotsville, Md., soldier killed - along with 27 others - in a Scud attack Feb. 25 in Saudi Arabia.
"They could have deserted, but sometimes you have to stand for something. My son stood for something," she said.
Of the 530,000 troops in the Persian Gulf, 85 percent were active-duty regulars. Average age, 26. Fifteen percent of the force were members of the reserve units and the National Guard. Their average age, 30. Those killed ranged from 18 to 52, with the average age about 25.
All were volunteers. They made up a force that was probably better- educated than others America has sent to war - nearly 100 percent had finished high school.
Twenty-four percent of the gulf force was black. The Defense Department has not calculated the number of blacks who died. Six percent of the Persian Gulf troops were women, and five women were killed in the war.
"We grieve for all our fallen soldiers and their families," President Bush told Congress on Thursday. ". . . Think about the men and women of Desert Storm. Let us honor them with our gratitude. Let us comfort the
families of the fallen and remember each precious life lost."
*
Army Spec. Joseph P. Bongiorni 3d, 20, who lived near the small Western Pennsylvania community of Hickory, had dreamed of a military career.
He wanted to join the Army full-time straight out of high school, but followed his parents' advice to finish his education first. After initial Army training, Bongiorni joined the Reserve, and entered West Virginia University in Morgantown.
"He came home on weekends," said his mother, Rita, 52. "He disciplined
himself very well. He didn't do anything he thought we didn't want him to do. There was no monkey business with him."
A quiet and handsome youth, Bongiorni loved music, played the trumpet in his high school band and was a defensive end on the school's football team. He was the Bongiornis' only son, the youngest of three children.
"He was a good boy," his mother said. "Very patriotic."
When the war broke out in the gulf, Bongiorni was eager to serve. He was called up in January and was in Saudi Arabia the next month, assigned as a specialist to the 14th Army Reserve Quartermaster Detachment. His main duty was water purification far from the front.
"He felt he had a job to do," his father, Joseph Bongiorni Jr., told the Associated Press. "We didn't want him to go."
After his death, in the Feb. 25 Scud attack in Saudi Arabia, the Bongiornis received two letters he had written.
"He said he could hear the bombs," said Rita Bongiorni. "And he told us he was OK, and not to worry."
In addition to his parents, Bongiorni is survived by two sisters.
Army First Lt. Terry L. Plunk, 25, of Vinton, Va., was named the "best all-around cadet" at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington and wrote the school from the gulf, seeking to teach there. He was killed while clearing land mines in Kuwait.
Plunk had a bright future. He had been valedictorian of William Byrd High School in Vinton, president of the senior class and a three-star athlete, participating in football, wrestling and soccer.
He also was a devout churchgoer, teaching a Bible class and singing in the choir at Vinton Baptist Church.
"If I had a son, I would want him to be like Terry," said longtime family friend James Turner, who lives in the Lake Roanoke area. "He was just what you might call an all-American boy."
Robert A. Patterson, principal of William Byrd High School and a member of Plunk's church, said Plunk was "the finest student I ever had here. He was one of the politest young men I was ever in contact with. It was always, 'Yes sir, no sir,' and 'Yes ma'am, no ma'am,' to everybody."
Plunk was a mine specialist assigned to A Company of the 27th Engineering Battalion at Fort Bragg, N.C.
"He could have easily gotten the men under him to do the job," Patterson said. "But he would lead the way; he did the job to keep his men from getting hurt. He deserves all the credit he can get."
Plunk was killed Feb. 26 by a mine at an airport in Kuwait. His mother, Doris, was too upset to talk about her son.
In Vinton, a community of about 8,000, residents have been showing support by donating money to a Virginia Military Institute scholarship fund in Plunk's name. More than $2,000 has been collected. At VMI, flags were lowered to half- staff.
Marine Lance Cpl. David Snyder, 21, of Kenmore, N.Y., entered the corps after his high school graduation. He was killed with 10 other Marines - possibly by "friendly fire" - while repelling an Iraqi attack near the Saudi Arabian town of Khafji.
Snyder knew what he wanted to do with his life by the age of 12, his mother said. He wanted to be a Marine. Six months after graduating from Kenmore West High School in suburban Buffalo, N.Y., in 1987, he realized his dream.
"He felt it was an honor, not just an obligation," his mother, Theresa Snyder, told the Associated Press.
Snyder was based at Camp Pendleton, Calif., and had been in the Middle East since mid-August.
Snyder was a TOW gunner, expert in the anti-tank missile system, and had served as commander of a vehicle crew in the First Light Armored Infantry Battalion.
"He was just an average American kid," said his mother. "He wasn't a great athlete, but if heart counted for anything, he would have been the all- star."
On the evening of Jan. 29, the lance corporal became one of the first ground combat casualties of the war.
Theresa and Mark Snyder said they were not bitter about military reports that their son may have been killed by allied gunfire.
"He died a hero and we're proud of what he stood for," Theresa Snyder said.
He was eulogized Feb. 25 during a funeral service at St. Andrew's Roman Catholic Church in Kenmore. His flag-draped casket was then borne away by Marines in dress uniform while others stood at attention, saluting their fallen comrade.
Army Spec. Anthony Madison, 27, had been looking for a well-paying job for years and finally landed one at a shipyard in Hampton, Va., when he got the news: His Army reserve unit, the 14th Army Reserve Quartermaster Detachment, was being called up.
"He never got to work one day," said his father, Norman Madison, 53, of Monessen, Pa. "But he said: 'Daddy, don't worry. I'm not going to be in the war. I'll be back from it all.'
"Then, he got on that bus and it made me sick. I couldn't stand it."
"Tony" Madison grew up in Monessen, a tiny Western Pennsylvania town where steel-mill jobs were once easy to find. His father, a former Marine boxing champion, had worked in the mills, losing a leg there in an accident - and also had a part-time job at Taylor Funeral Home, driving a hearse and doing some embalming.
"Tony enjoyed boxing," Norman Madison said. "He dreamed of being a professional boxer."
But he had a family and there were bills to pay in the meantime. Tony Madison - a 1983 graduate of Monessen High School - did bricklaying jobs, including one at the funeral home. He also worked as a warehouse keeper in Hampton but left the job because it didn't pay enough. The shipyard work was more promising.
But the Army called. "I told him, 'I'm having nightmares about you, real bad nightmares,' " Norman Madison said. "I saw a bomb hitting a building. I saw him getting killed twice. . . . I had that eerie feeling he wouldn't come back. When I heard about the bomb, I knew he was dead."
Madison was killed in the Feb. 25 Scud attack. The funeral home where he and his father worked handled the arrangements. He was laid out in Monessen's civic center, where hundreds paid their respects, and buried at a nearby cemetery.
In addition to his father, Madison leaves a wife and two children.
Army Cpl. James R. McCoy, 29, of Wilmington, joined the Marines after his graduation in 1979 from A.I. du Pont High School. When he finished his tour, he enrolled in an auto mechanics course and later enlisted with the Army.
McCoy was part of the Second Armored Cavalry Regiment based in Bamberg, Germany, and was assigned as a mechanic to a Bradley fighting vehicle, a troop carrier.
When the gulf crisis broke out, the unit was deployed to Saudi Arabia.
McCoy died Feb. 27 when his vehicle was blown up in northern Saudi Arabia, ''so close to the end of the war, just a few more hours," his mother, Maggie McCoy Thompson, told the Associated Press.
She said he had written home to "tell everybody my unit is on the front line, because we're the best there is. My group is ready. . . . I may not make it back, but I am doing what I was trained to do."
Thompson's neighbor also got a letter from McCoy. It arrived Wednesday. ''Hi Homeboy, I ain't dead yet," it said. By then, however, McCoy had been on the casualty list for a week.
"Reading that letter was really hard," said Rosa Romer, whose son - a close friend of McCoy's - received the letter. In the letter "he said he hoped that God would forgive the (allied coalition) for what it was doing, but that this was something that had to be done."
McCoy leaves a wife who lives in Germany with their four children.
Army Private Timothy Shaw, 21, of Spotsville, Md., had been trying to get ahead.
In the day, he worked at MCI Telecommunications in Pentagon City, in the Washington suburbs, duplicating graphics and other documents in the company's reproduction department.
At night, he took classes at Prince George's Community College, where he was working toward a business degree.
"He liked to listen to music and dance," said his mother, Annette Brown, 45, of Alexandria, Va. "But when the weekend came, he didn't have to go out and party."
Shaw's sense of civic duty prompted him to join the Army Reserve when he was 17, family members said.
"He said, 'Mom, if I'm ever called to serve in a national disaster, I have to go.' He knew he had a responsibility," Brown said. "He joined of his own free will."
Shaw and his Reserve unit left for Saudi Arabia in late February. Six days later, he died in the Feb. 25 Scud attack.
"Everyone tries to figure why he was there," Brown said. "I don't know if he was destined to go.
"But we prayed when he left. . . . The same God that protects you in D.C., Maryland and Virginia is the same God everywhere. There is only one God. He recited the 23d Psalm: 'The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.'. . . Then he said he loved me. My baby was very special."
On Thursday, Shaw was laid to rest on a sunny, windswept hillside at Arlington National Cemetery while a bugler's sad notes resounded across the landscape.
A day before the ground offensive began, Army Maj. Marie T. Rossi was ready to go. A helicopter pilot, she had prepared for the job and exuded confidence.
"Personally, as an aviator and a soldier, this is the moment that everybody trains for," Rossi told a CNN interviewer. "So I feel ready to meet the challenge."
Rossi, 32, was the daughter of Paul and Gertrude Rossi of Oradell, a prosperous, two-square-mile town in northern New Jersey. Population, 8,000.
She graduated from River Dell Regional High School in Oradell and from Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., where she became interested in a military career through an ROTC program.
"We had followed Marie's career for years," said Laurence Miniter, a friend of the Rossi family's. "When she became a commander, it was every parent's dream realized. We were all flying at 30,000 feet. The war was over. They were safe. We were going to have one hell of a party when she got back."
Rossi served with the 159th Aviation Battalion of the 24th Infantry Division. Before the war, she was stationed at Fort Stewart, Ga.
Her husband, John Anderson Cayton, also a helicopter pilot, was stationed in the war zone, 300 miles from his wife. They met while serving in Korea, and were married in June.
When Cayton learned that his wife was among the first women to fly in the combat zone, "he was just thrilled. He just laughed and said, 'That's wonderful,' " Cayton's grandmother, Ernestine Gunn of Greenbriar, Tenn., told the Associated Press.
"I think, as women in the military, we see ourselves as soldiers," Rossi told a military journalist in a videotaped interview in February. "We don't really put it in the perspective of men and women."
Rossi died when the helicopter she was piloting crashed into an unlit microwave tower during bad weather on March 1 - the day after the cease-fire took hold.
In Oradell, the town hall was draped in black bunting as the community mourns. Rossi is scheduled to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery this week.
In addition to her husband and parents, she is survived by a brother and two sisters.
For Army Pvt. Adrienne Mitchell, 20, the military was a way of paying for her education, according to her mother.
Mitchell played outfield for the softball team at Moreno Valley High School in Moreno Valley, Calif., where she graduated in 1988.
She signed up with the Army in the spring of 1990 under a deferred enlistment program, intending to complete her schooling at the University of California, Riverside, and study law enforcement.
But the crisis in the gulf intervened.
Mitchell had expressed concern that her supply unit wasn't seasoned enough when she called her parents for the last time a few weeks ago.
Her father, retired Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Frank Mitchell, compared his long tour of duty with his daughter's brief one.
"I did 30 years, 21 days, you know, and I didn't get a scratch," he told the Associated Press. "My daughter's been in for five months, and she's dead."
