Photo By Mark Getman | Retired Brig. Gen. Patrick Alesia, president of the 42nd Rainbow Division Association...... read more read more
Subscribe
GARDEN CITY, N.Y.-- New York Army National Guard Soldiers will join veterans of the 42nd Infantry Division in commemorating the division and marking Veterans Day with a wreath laying in this Long Island Village on Saturday, Nov. 9.
In 1917 the division was formed at Camp Mills, which was located where Garden City is today.
Today the Rainbow Division Veterans Foundation and the Rainbow Division Veterans Association, a group of New York City-area residents who served in the division, team up to commemorate the division’s founding by placing a wreath at the monument which marks the location of Camp Miles.
Created between World War I and World War II, the memorial commemorates the World War I battles which the National Guardsmen of the division fought in.
It’s one of nine locations at which wreaths marking the history of the 42nd Infantry Division will be placed over the Veterans Day weekend.
The Garden City monument was originally dedicated in 1941, rededicated in a 1997 and again in a 2005 ceremony, and recently restored for a commemoration of the 42nd Infantry Division's creation in 1917 in August 2017.
This year Garden City Village Administrator Ralph V. Suozzi, and Garden City Village Superintendent of Public Works Joseph DiFrancisco will also be presented with plaques in appreciation for the work that was done to restore the monument site.
The 42nd Division was created as the Army was anxious to get American Soldiers to Europe. Col. Douglas McArthur came up with the idea of taking National Guard units from 26 states and the District of Columbia and organizing them into one division which could deploy quickly. The division would also allow many states and not just one state or region to have a role.
The 42nd Division, he said, would stretch across the country “like a rainbow” which gave the division its nickname.
The New York National Guard’s 69th Infantry Regiment was New York’s contribution to the division and because of area’s closeness to New York harbor and railroad connections the Army located Camp Mills where Garden City is today as the division’s rallying place.
McArthur went on to become the division’s chief of staff, a brigade commander and division commander, before he led armies in the South Pacific during World War II and then in Korea.
The Rainbow Division Veterans Foundation, which has evolved from the group first created by World War I veterans in 1919, maintains the division’s monuments and creates new ones.
Four Rainbow Division memorials commemorate the unit's birthplace and deployment preparations for war. One is in Garden City, the site of the Camp Mills preparations for World War I, while the other is located at Camp Gruber, Oklahoma, marking the site of the 42nd Infantry Division's recreation for WWII.
Wreaths are placed at these locations by 42nd Infantry Division representatives over Veteran’s day weekends as well as at five other locations.
One wreath is placed at the statue of Gen. Douglas McArthur at the United States Military Academy at West Point. A wreath commemorating the 167th Infantry Regiment from Alabama is placed on markers at the Birmingham Bridge and the train station in Montgomery. A wreath commemorating the George National Guard’s 151st Machinegun Battalion is place in Macon, Georgia; and in Indianapolis in a rural cemetery.
These wreaths are placed each year because remembering the division’s history is a vital part of the Rainbow Division Veterans Foundation mission, explained retired New York Army National Guard Lt. Col. Paul Fanning, the foundation’s memorials officer.
“The roots of the division is as the nation’s first all-American division with the elements coming from across the nation,” Fanning said. “The diverse location of the memorials reflects that.”
The 42nd Division history, written in 1936, is titled “Americans All, the Rainbow at War.”
The division memorials were all created by the members of the Rainbow Division Veteran’s Association following the world wars in places associated with the unit’s formation and training, Fanning explained. The memorials commemorating the Iraq War located at Fort Drum, N.Y. and Fort Dix, N.J., were placed in 2014 and 2015, respectively.
Today the 42nd Infantry Division, with headquarters in Troy, N.Y., has 20,000 associated Soldiers with elements in New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New Hampshire.
Division Soldiers responded to natural disasters, including the major ice storm of 1998, and responded when the World Trade Center was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. The 42nd Infantry Division became the first National Guard division headquarters to go to war since 1952 when Major General Joseph Taluto took charge of 23,000 Soldiers in North Central Iraq in 2005.
More recently, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo mobilized hundreds of division Soldiers in support of civil authorities in response to Hurricanes Irene in 2011 and Sandy in 2012.
The division headquarters mobilized and deployed a contingent of approximately 60 Soldiers in 2015 to support security operations at JTF-Gitmo at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The division headquarters is currently preparing to mobilize 450 Soldiers for deployment to Kuwait and other Middle Eastern operating locations in 2020.
| Date Taken: | 10.29.2019 |
| Date Posted: | 10.29.2019 15:51 |
| Story ID: | 349758 |
| Location: | GARDEN CITY , NY, US |
| Web Views: | 47 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Veteran's Day wreath will commemorate history of NY National Guard's 42nd Division, by Eric Durr, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
LEAVE A COMMENT