Also known as a unit crest or DUI, a Distinctive Unit Insignia is worn by all Soldiers (except General Officers) in units that have been
authorized to be issued the device. It is worn centered on the shoulder loops of the Army Green Service Uniform (AGSU) and the blue Army Service Uniform (Enlisted only) with the base of the insignia toward the outside shoulder seam. DUIs are not worn on the Dress variations of either uniform, however.
Enlisted personnel wear the insignia centered on a shoulder loop by placing it an equal distance from the outside shoulder seam to the outside edge of the shoulder-loop button. Officers (except Generals) wearing grade insignia on the shoulder loops center the DUI by placing it an equal distance between the inside edge of the grade insignia and the outside edge of the button.
Full guidance on wear of the DUI is found in DA Pamphlet 670-1,
Section 21-22, "Distinctive unit insignia" and 21–3(d) and (e),
"Beret" and
"Garrison Cap," respectively.
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Long inactivated, the 31st Field Hospital is an Army Medical Department unit that saw service in World War II and the Vietnam War. Serving in the Pacific Theater during WWII, the Hospital took in especially heavy casualties during the invasion of Okinawa. It was also one of two Field Hospitals responsible for the initial processing and diagnosis of neuropsychiatric cases, which made up an astonishing 13-plus percent of admissions during the campaign. It was commonly referred to as “shell shock,” certainly a pat description but one not without some merit: a memorandum regarding psychiatric care written on 30 April 1945 noted that the “relatively large percentage of psychiatric cases in this campaign…may be attributed in part, to the concentration of artillery fire, which many of the troops faced for the first time in the Pacific. The correlation was at times so close that one could tell from the admissions as to which unit was under fire.”
The 31st Field Hospital was also deployed to support combat troops during the Vietnam War, when it was based in Korat, Thailand. On 7 May 1962, eleven Army nurses were the first personnel to be assigned to the staff at the hospital, which would be the recipient of a Meritorious Unit Commendation for its service between April 1965 and June 1966, more than living up to the unit motto of “Service, Compassion, Skill.”