The 320th Field Artillery Regiment Distinctive Unit Insignia, also called a unit crest or DUI, was first approved on 27 July 1925 for the same designation the unit has today. It was redesignated numerous times, including for the 320th Field Artillery Battalion (April 1942), 320th Glider Field Artillery Battalion (October 1942), 320th Airborne Field Artillery Battalion (October 1951), and back to the original designation of 320th Field Artillery Regiment on 1 September 1971.
VOLENS ET POLENS, the Regimental motto, is Latin for “Willing And Able.” The scarlet shield stands for Artillery, and the palmetto tree is a symbol for South Carolina, the district to which the unit was allocated when created. A Lorraine cross on the palmetto tree denotes service in the Lorraine sector in France during World War I.
Distinctive Unit Insignias are 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 (ASU, Enlisted only) with the base of the insignia toward the outside shoulder seam. More 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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Constituted on 5 August 1917 as the 320th Field Artillery in the National Army and assigned to the 82nd Division, the 320th Field Artillery Regiment began its length combat record assigned to the157th Artillery Brigade along with the 319th and 321st Field Artillery regiments. In all, it would fight in three campaigns during World War I—St. Mihiel, Meuse-Argonne, and Lorraine 1918—before returning to the United States and being demobilized at Camp Dix, New Jersey on 12 May 1919.
Reconstituted in the Organized Reserves as the 320th Field Artillery Battalion and again assigned to the 82nd Division, the unit would be redesignated as the 320th Glider Field Artillery Battalion and fight in six World War II campaigns, earning two Arrowhead devices for two of the campaigns streamers by taking part in assault landings in the Normandy and Rhineland campaigns. In addition to those battle honors, the Regiment was selected for a Presidential Unit Citation (for St. Mere Eglise), two French Croix de Guerre with Palm awards, a French Croix de Guerre Fourragère, a Military Order of William (Degree of the Knight of the Fourth Class), a Netherlands Orange Lanyard, and a Belgian Fourragère for two citations in the Order of the Day of the Belgian Army.
During the War in Vietnam, the Regiment (redesignated as the 320th Artillery in 1959) fought in an fifteen of that conflict’s seventeen named campaigns, an astounding number considering that some of the Regiment’ units were deployed to the Dominican Republic in Operation Power Pack in the spring of 1965 (it also deployed in support of two other Armed Forces Expeditions in the 1980s, specifically Operations Urgent Fury in Grenada and Just Cause in Panama). In 1990-1991, it deployed to Kuwait and earned two more battle honors for the Defense of Saudi Arabia and the Liberation and Defense of Kuwait.
In the 21st century, the 320th Regiment was assigned to the 101st Airborne. As of Autumn 2023, the 1st and 3rd Battalions are components of the 101st Airborne Division's 2nd and 3rd Brigade Combat Teams respectively, while the 2nd and 4th Battalions were inactivated in 2015 and 2016.