nj.com -- A satellite phone in the combat zone 6,000 miles away brought the voice of Spc. Ryan Doltz to the tidy yellow house in Morris County for the final time on Wednesday.

The 26-year-old New Jersey Army National Guard soldier from Mine Hill was checking in, giving his parents, Cheryl and Raymond Doltz, an update from Baghdad.

"It was hot and it was dirty, but he thought things were improving," his mother said yesterday. The Iraqi children "loved candy." And while the Iraqi teenagers seemed to be behind much of the violence, the older Iraqis appreciated the stability brought by the occupation force that included her son's unit, the 3rd Battalion of the 112th Field Artillery.

On Saturday, the Doltz family learned their son was among four New Jersey National Guard troops from the Morristown unit to die in separate attacks a day apart in Baghdad.

"It's like a bad dream," said Edna Deacon, captain on the Mine Hill Volunteer First Aid Squad, which Doltz joined before leaving for Iraq.

The name of a soldier who was killed alongside Doltz by a roadside bomb Saturday was not immediately made public. His family has been contacted, but no announcement will be made until after they return today from a trip outside the United States, said Lt. Col. Roberta Niedt, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.

On Friday, unit members Sgt. Frank Carvill, 51, of Carlstadt, and Spc. Christopher Duffy, 26, of Brick, were killed in an ambush. They were the first New Jersey National Guard soldiers to die in combat since World War II. Three other soldiers from the unit were wounded in Friday's attack.

A National Guard sergeant from the Morristown unit visited the Doltz home yesterday afternoon. Wearing a green dress uniform, he left after about an hour, his head down.

An American flag flies at most of the houses in the Mine Hill neighborhood, including the Doltzes'. The flag at the home across the street from theirs flew at half-staff yesterday.

Inside the Doltz house, on the mantelpiece, were four computer printouts of pictures Ryan had sent home from Iraq. In one, he's leaning against a truck, wearing a big grin. His grandfather, who served in the military in World War II, appears in another family photo, striking nearly the same pose and wearing a similar grin.

The 3rd Battalion of the 112th Field Artillery, which drills at armories in Morristown, Lawrenceville, Cherry Hill and Toms River, left for Baghdad in February after its members trained for one month at Fort Dix to become military policemen, a specialty in short supply in the occupation force.

It was a mission Doltz nearly missed.

Doltz, a Virginia Military Institute graduate, fell during pre-deployment urban warfare training at Fort Dix in January, breaking both heels.

The initial prognosis was six weeks in a wheelchair and up to six months of rehabilitation.

Cheryl Doltz, a teacher at Dover Middle School, was in no rush to see her son on his feet quickly.

"Maybe it will all be over by then," she remembered thinking when she learned how long the rehabilitation would take.

But Doltz, a Dover High School graduate, had a burning desire to beat the doctor's timetable and get to Iraq with his unit. He arrived in Baghdad on Good Friday.

He joined the Virginia National Guard in 1998 while a student at VMI and had transferred to the New Jersey unit last July, his family said.

"The military life was comforting to him, he was a leader," said Sarah Miller, a family friend. "His drive was what got him redeployed."

The speed of Doltz's recovery from the heel injuries stunned Miller's father, Donald Miller, a Vietnam veteran who retired recently from the National Guard.

"I was surprised, but I guess they really need the troops, especially the MPs," Miller said. "I thought for sure he wouldn't go because it's (a) pretty painful (injury)."

Not everyone was surprised by Doltz's desire to make it to Iraq.

Sarah Miller went to high school with Doltz's older sister, Anne, and saw him grow from a little boy who loved to play soldier to a man eager to serve his country.

"He was like, 'I can't wait to get there,'" she said. "'I know I can do some good.'"

Doing for others was part of Doltz's upbringing.

His father, Raymond, is a former chief of the Mine Hill Fire Department. Both Doltz and his younger brother, Gregory, were members of the first aid squad in Mine Hill. The 6-foot-5-inch brothers made transporting even the heaviest patients look easy.

"I used to call them my bookends," said Deacon, the squad captain, who is 5 feet 8 inches tall. "Between them, I felt like a midget."

Deacon said Ryan Doltz was all business when the squad was on duty.

"On a call, he was very serious," she said. "But afterwards, he'd be joking around. He'd say, 'Look at this ambulance. It's a mess, now we have to clean it up.'"

Last week, the Mine Hill squad was named volunteer rescue squad of the year by the state of New Jersey, in large measure because of Ryan Doltz's dedication, Deacon said.

Deacon sent Doltz an e-mail to make sure he knew how much he had done to help to win the honors.

"I said, 'You were there in spirit with us,'" she said.

Doltz had not replied.

But he managed to get through to his parents on Wednesday to share his latest news. He called again on Friday, his mother said, but no one was home.

As Cheryl Doltz said goodbye to a visitor yesterday, she stopped at the screen door near her home's big bay window, where a red, white, and blue American Legion star hangs.

"He was doing exactly what he wanted to do," she said.