The first group of Hawai'i National Guard soldiers heading to the Middle East will gather tonight to say goodbye to their families before leaving tomorrow morning for two months of training at Fort Hood in Texas.

The clock will start ticking for a yearlong mobilization that means the Hawai'i citizen soldiers should be in Kuwait for about nine months, with a month for demobilization at the end.

About 1,200 Hawai'i National Guard and 500 Army Reserve soldiers with the 100th Battalion, 442nd Infantry Regiment are heading out for the Mainland training as part of the 29th Infantry Brigade Combat Team.

The 29th brigade is expected to land in Kuwait in late October, and will have management and security responsibilities at several bases.

More than 1,000 soldiers will have security responsibilities for convoys traveling up into Iraq.

About 270 soldiers with the first group are leaving tomorrow morning on a charter flight from Hickam Air Force Base, officials said.

Those soldiers, from the brigade special troops battalion and headquarters and headquarters company, will muster around midnight tonight at the National Guard hangar at Kalaeloa.

There they will get to say goodbye to families before boarding buses for Hickam.

Approximately 250 of the citizen soldiers will be leaving each day this week on charters from their home station around the Islands.

A sendoff ceremony was held on Saturday at Aloha Stadium.