More than 700 Soldiers from a St. Paul-based U.S. Army National Guard brigade will deploy next week, the Minnesota National Guard said today.
A deployment ceremony for 723 Soldiers from the 34th Combat Aviation Brigade will be held Saturday at 11 a.m. at the Minneapolis Convention Center. The brigade will leave Tuesday for Ft. Sill, Okla., where it will spend about three months in training before heading for Iraq.
Brigade members fly Blackhawk utility helicopters, Chinook cargo helicopters and Apache attack helicopters. In Iraq, they will transport cargo, personnel and material.
This is the first time the brigade as a unit has been sent to Iraq, although some individual Soldiers have already served there, said First Lt. John Hobot, spokesman for the Minnesota National Guard. The unit should be gone for a year, Hobot said.
Besides Minnesota, Soldiers in this brigade also come from Bismarck, N.D.; Boise, Idaho; and Helena, Mont.
