They likely won’t be trading their Army helmets for pointed party hats, but a group of Iowa soldiers will mark the birthday of the National Guard today. Colonel Robert King, spokesman for the Iowa Guard, says they’ll cut a cake and celebrate the Guard’s 364th birthday.While the Iowa National Guard was founded in 1837, Colonel King says the National Guard itself predates the founding of the United States.King says Iowa Guardsmen have served in every U-S conflict since Iowa became a state. A greater percentage of Iowans served in the Civil War than from any other state. More recently, he says two thousand Iowa Guard members served in the Persian Gulf War of 1991.There are 95-hundred members of the Iowa Army and Air National Guard, which have a combined 107 units in 50 Iowa communities.