Four hundred Virginia National Guard soldiers, including companies based in Bedford, Clifton Forge and Lexington, were called for active duty in Iraq on Thursday. Some New River Valley-based companies could also get the call.

The soldiers are part of the largest deployment of Virginia soldiers since the 2007 troop surge in Iraq, said Maj. Cotton Puryear, spokesman for the Virginia National Guard.

Soldiers from Lynchburg's 1st Battalion, 116th Infantry Regiment, 116th Brigade Combat Team were told to report for federal duty on Jan. 5. After 45 to 60 days of training at Camp Shelby, Miss., they will deploy to Iraq as a security force.

The call-up includes the Bedford and Farmville-based Company A and the Lexington and Clifton Forge-based Company B. Soldiers from the Christiansburg and Radford-based Company C and the Pulaski and Martinsville-based Company D could also be called to duty, Puryear said.

The battalion's orders call for an active duty period of up to 400 days, but the U.S. secretary of defense can extend the tour to as long as two years.

Some individual soldiers in the battalion previously served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Bedford's Company A was sent to Afghanistan in 2004.

The battalion also was mobilized for duty in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2002 and 2003, and was last called upon for peacekeeping duty in Kosovo from August 2006 to November 2007.

In Iraq, the battalion will join about 40 members of the Virginia Beach-based 329th Regional Support Group and 155 solders from Virginia Beach's 229th Military Police Company. A handful of other individual guard members are also in Iraq now.

About 200 soldiers from Richmond's 276th Engineer Battalion are in Afghanistan now, along with 20 soldiers from Sandston, and a several other individuals. They'll be joined this spring by the Gate City-based 1032nd Transportation Company.

Units from Powhatan and Manassas returned from Afghanistan this fall.