The 434th Field Artillery Brigade Shoulder Sleeve Insignia, or unit patch, was approved on 25 January 1979. Scarlet and yellow are used throughout to reflect the organization as part of the Field Artillery Corps. Alternating yellow and red squares are intended to mimic a grid patter of fire symbolizing the Brigade’s primary mission, with the three black circles representing three cannon balls that have made three consecutive hits, thus representing accuracy. Four sections on the left and right with the three cannonballs in the middle are a visual reference to the unit’s numerical designation of 434.
The 434th Field Artillery Brigade began its service career as the 1st Tank Destroyer Brigade when it was constituted in the Army of the United States on 21 November 1942. Activated three days later at Camp Hood in Texas, the Brigade was deployed to the European Theater and took part in five campaigns: Normandy; Northern France; Rhineland; Ardennes-Alsace; Central Europe. Inactivated in November 1945 in Germany, the Brigade was converted and redesignated as the 434th Field Artillery Group and allotted to the Organized Reserve Corps, which became the Army Reserve in 1952.
Related Items434th Distinctive Unit Insignia Unit Crest (DUI)Although the unit underwent several redesignations over the next four decades—434th Artillery Group in September 1959, 434th Field Artillery Group (again) in March 1972, and finally its current designation in June 1978—it would not be inactivated again until 1990. That period of inactivation would last seventeen years and ended with the Brigade being first transferred to U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) on 9 November 2006, and then its Headquarters being activated 17 April 2007 at Fort Still, Oklahoma. The Brigade is now part of the United States Army Fires Center of Excellence, a formation under TRADOC based at Fort Sill, and conducts Basic Combat Training for new enlistees.