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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 17, 2007 No. 07-133 35th DIVISION SOLDERS HONORED DURING DEPARTURE CEREMONY JULY 20 Approximately 200 soldiers of the 35th Division, headquartered in Leavenworth,
will be honored in a departure ceremony on Friday, July 20. The ceremony
will take place at 10 a.m. in Harney Gymnasium, 185 Fourth Street, Building
664, Fort Leavenworth. The 35th Division is one of eight divisions in
the Army National Guard and is made up of Guardsmen from Kansas, Missouri
and Illinois. "Any time you need a large number of soldiers who are well-trained
and experienced in command and control, and logistical operations, the
35th Division is the kind of unit you want to have," said Maj. Gen.
Tod Bunting. "They served in Bosnia in 2003, and they oversaw more
than 19,000 National Guardsmen from across the country down in Louisiana
in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina." The soldiers will deploy to Camp Atterbury, Ind., for additional training
before deploying to Kosovo for their year-long mission in the fall of
2007. In Kosovo, the division will be the headquarters unit for Task Force
Falcon, a multinational peacekeeping force. The task force will be under
the command of Brig. Gen. John E. Davoren; Sgt. Maj. Timothy Cochran will
be command sergeant major. Once in Kosovo, the 35th Division will become part of the Balkans Nine
peacekeeping mission. The task force will include approximately 1,500
soldiers from the U.S. Army active component, Army National Guard and
Army Reserve. In 2003, the division conducted a similar peacekeeping mission in Bosnia. Coinciding with NATO force reductions, the division entered the Bosnian mission as a Multi-National Brigade consisting of 1,500 U.S. soldiers and another 1,700 soldiers from NATO and other nations participating in the Bosnian peacekeeping mission. These included battalion size units from Russia, Turkey, Spain and Poland, and a tank company from Denmark. -30- |
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