Five hundred New York Army National Guard Soldiers assigned to the headquarters of the 42nd Infantry Division are preparing to depart for a Middle East deployment.

Ceremonies were held on Long Island, in Syracuse and in Albany for the 500 soldiers and more than 2,400 family members.

“Rainbow Division” soldiers will deploy to the Central Command’s area of responsibility, where the headquarters will command Task Force Spartan in a region that includes Iraq, Iran and the Arabian Peninsula.

The 42nd Infantry Division headquarters elements conducted the same mission from March to November 2020.

The New York Army Guard soldiers have been preparing for this mission for the past year. They will train at Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, for two weeks before moving to Fort Cavazos, Texas. They will go on federal active duty  there and conduct additional training.

The New York National Guard soldiers will replace members of the 38th Infantry Division of the Indiana National Guard. 

They are expected to return from their mission in 11 months.

The largest farewell was held at the Nassau County Police Academy in Garden City, Long Island, where Major Gen. Jack James spoke to 240 soldiers and over 1,000 family members.

In his remarks, James told the Soldiers that he was proud of them and assured their families that the Guardsmen were ready for the mission.

“This team, these soldiers, are truly remarkable. There is no mission this group cannot accomplish,” James said.

James also thanked the families for their service “on the home front” while the 42nd Infantry Division executed their mission. 

He also urged the Soldiers to watch out for each other.

At the University of Syracuse’s National Veterans Resource Center, Brig. Gen. Patrick Clare, the division’s assistant commander for support, delivered similar messages to the 80 Soldiers and their 450 guests attending that event.

The 42nd Infantry Division is headquartered in Troy and includes 5,500 New York soldiers as well as soldiers from the National Guards of New Jersey, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and several other states.

The division was born in 1917 when elements from 26 state National Guard’s were combined into one multi-state division to deploy quickly to France in World War I. Then a colonel, Douglas MacArthur said the division would reach across America “like a rainbow” — and the nickname stuck.

In World War II the “Rainbow Division” fought across southern Germany, capturing the cities of Wurzburg, Nuremberg and Munich and liberating the infamous Dachau concentration camp.

The division became part of the New York National Guard in 1947. The 42nd ID soldiers responded in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in New York City.

The division headquarters and major support elements deployed to Iraq in 2005 to lead Task Force Liberty, marking the first time National Guard headquarters had gone to war since 1953. Rainbow soldiers also fought in Afghanistan.

The division headquarters deployed to the Central Command area in 2020.