The 102nd Field Artillery Regiment Distinctive Unit Insignia (also referred to as a DUI or unit crest) was originally approved for the 102nd Field Artillery on 21 May 1925 with imagery that reflects its most recent combat service up to that point, i.e., the First World War. Since then it has been redesignated three times to reflect the unit’s changing designations (in 1942, 1961, and 1972), was rescinded on 1 May 1988, and was reinstated for the 102nd Field Artillery on 1 October 1996.
SIC ITUR AD ASTRA, Latin for “This Is The Way To The Stars," is the unit motto. It was the motto of the Second Corps of Cadets, a battalion-sized unit in the Regiment’s lineage that was formed in 1874, and was inspired by a line from Virgil’s Aeneid that translates as “Go on, raise your glories higher/Tis thus that men to heaven aspire.” The pointed tower in the top left represents operations in Champagne-Marne and is from the coat of arms of Chateau-Thierry; the embattled tower is from the arms of Verdun and represents the Meuse-Argonne campaign; and the fleur-de-lis beneath the chevron is for Soissons and stands for the Aisne-Marne campaign.
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The 102nd Field Artillery Regiment was first organized on 19 July 1786 as the Cadet Company in the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia and assigned to the 1st Brigade, 2nd Division. Needless to say, it has undergone myriad redesignations and reorganizations over that period; during the Civil War two of its components—one redesignated as Company D, 1st Massachusetts Heavy Artillery Regiment, the other redesignated as Salem Cadets—were mustered into Federal service during the Civil War, taking part in seven campaigns.
During World War I, the unit was reorganized and redesignated as the 2nd Battalion, 101st Field Artillery and made an element of the 26th Division, taking part in six campaigns before being demobilized in April 1919. In World War II, the unit—which previously had been designated as the 2d Battalion, 102d Field artillery, an element of the 26th Division—was redesignated as the 102nd Field Artillery Battalion, also an element of the 26th Division (later 26th Infantry Division). This was the designation it fought under while earning four campaign streamers in the European Theater.
The unit became the 102nd Artillery, a parent regiment in the Combat Arms Regimental System (CARS) on 1 May 1959; it was redesignated as the 102nd Field Artillery in March 1972, then withdrawn from CARS in March 1988. Consolidated with the 211th Field Artillery and designated as the 101st Field Artillery, an element of the 42nd Infantry Division in 1993, the Regiment was restored when it was withdrawn from 101st Field Artillery and reorganized under the U.S. Army Regimental System as the 102nd Field Artillery Regiment consisting of the 1st Battalion, which would go on to earn a Meritorious Unit Commendation in the War on Terrorism before the Regiment was inactivated in a color-casing ceremony held at Fort Independence in South Boston, Massachusetts on 15 July 2006