42nd Infantry 'Rainbow' Division Honors Veterans in Garden City Today

Media Advisory

GARDEN CITY, N.Y. (05/29/2021) — New York Army National Guard veterans present a memorial wreath on Saturday morning, May 29 at the World War I Rainbow Division Veterans Memorial here to honor the service of past 42nd Infantry Division Soldiers for Memorial Day.

The 42nd Infantry Division was created in 1917 at Camp Mills, near present day Garden City.

The memorial wreath is provided by the Rainbow Division Veterans Foundation Memorials Committee. The foundation oversees dozens of memorial sites in the U.S. and Europe where 42nd Division Soldiers served.

WHAT: Memorial wreath presentation at the memorial site in honor of Memorial Day.

WHO: Members of the New York Guard's 11th Regiment provide a color guard, bugler and honor guard for remarks and the wreath laying by retired Brig. Gen. Pat Alesia. Long Island veterans of the 42nd Infantry Division are expected to attend.

WHEN: Saturday, May 29 10 at noon.

WHERE: Rainbow Division World War I Memorial, Clinton Street and Commercial Blvd, Garden City, New York.

Media Opportunity:

Visual of uniformed Soldier placing a memorial wreath at the site of the World War I mobilization training grounds at Camp Mills. Interviews with veterans about the significance of Memorial Day.

Background Information

Rainbow Division WWI Memorial, Garden City, N.Y.

Located on a quarter-acre triangular plot of land, this monument is a fifteen by five foot obelisk of Alabama limestone. It stands across the street from what was the entrance to the 42nd Division's World War I training grounds at Camp Mills on the Hempstead Plains of Long Island.

Inscribed on it are a lone bugler standing in a military cemetery, a list of the units that made up the Rainbow Division, the states they came from, and the names of the World War I campaigns in which they fought.

The 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.

Rainbow Division Veterans Foundation

The Rainbow Division Veterans Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to commemorating the deeds, sacrifices and traditions of the 42nd Infantry (Rainbow) Division through memorials, education and the preservation of the history of the division.

Four Rainbow Division memorials commemorate the unit's birthplace and deployment preparations for war. One is here 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 mobilization for WWII.

Additional memorials are located at Fort Drum, N.Y. and Fort Dix, N.J., the two training sites for the 42nd Infantry Division's mobilization and training for service in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

These memorials recognize the sacrifices of Rainbow Division Soldiers and their families from generation to generation.

The 42nd Infantry (Rainbow) Division

The 42nd Infantry Division, with headquarters in Troy, N.Y., has 20,000 Soldiers assigned to elements in New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New Hampshire.

The 42nd Infantry Division first organized in World War I from National Guard units from around the country. The division's first chief-of-staff, then Col. Douglas MacArthur, said the division would stretch across the United States "like a rainbow" and the nickname stuck. In World War II the "Rainbow Division" landed in France and fought across Germany, taking several major cities, liberating the Dachau Concentration Camp, and occupying Vienna.

Following World War II the division became part of the New York National Guard. 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. Hundreds of division members have served on COVID-19 response duties since March of 2020.

The division headquarters mobilized and deploy a contingent of approximately 60 Soldiers in 2015 to support security operations at JTF-Gitmo at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The division returned from its second deployment since 9/11 in December 2020, after serving a year in Kuwait as part of Task Force Spartan, overseeing military operations and exercises with regional partners.