Family members identified Scott Helvenston, Michael Teague, and Jerry Zovko, as three of the four Americans who were killed in an ambush in Fallujah, Iraq, their bodies incinerated and dragged through the streets.

Helvenston, who joined the crack Navy Seal unit at the age of 17, wanted a taste of combat and a chance to make some good money, a friend told Florida's Sun Sentinel newspaper.

The 38-year-old went to Iraq to earn 60,000 in three months and to get a taste of combat that he had never seen in his 12 years in the Navy, Mark Divine told the daily.

The life-long athlete had recently lost a lot of money in a SEAL physical-fitness training video business he started after leaving the service.

His mother, Kathryn Helvenston-Wettengel, recalled her son as a life-long athlete, an adventurous, entrepreneurial spirit and a father who was devoted to his two children.

A world-champion pentathlon winner, a sometime actor and lately a fitness promoter, Helvenston also worked as a technical adviser on the movies "GI Jane", starring Demi Moore, and "Face Off" with John Travolta.

His mother, speaking from her home in Leesburg, Florida, told the paper she was tortured by the television images from Fallujah.

"You know what they did to him?" she asked. "You know what they did to him? I can't talk about it. What happened to him was so horrendous."

Danica and Jozo Zovko saw the scenes of mob violence before learning that their son Jerko "Jerry" Zovko was in the middle of it, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper.

The Croatian couple from Willoughby, Ohio, was planning their son's funeral Thursday.

"It's going to be a closed casket," said Danica Zovko. "But I will see my son, whatever is left of him."

Jerko Zovko, 32, a talented linguist who spoke five languages fluently, joined the army at the age of 19 and served with an elite army ranger unit before being discharged in 2001.

In Clarkesville, Tennessee, Rhonda Teague was mourning her husband Michael, a 12-year veteran of the Army who had done tours of duty in Afghanistan, Panama and Grenada.

"I, his son Brandon and his friends and family will miss him without measure," she said in a statement.

Teague served with the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, an elite helicopter unit known by the nickname ''Night Stalkers'' for its ability to carry out difficult missions at night, often flying using night-vision goggles, according to the Commercial Appeal newspaper of Memphis.

The 38-year-old had been awarded the Bronze Star for his service in Afghanistan, his wife said.

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