Commonly called a unit crest or DUI for short, the 85th Medical Battalion Distinctive Unit Insignia was approved on 21 August 1967. Its triangular design has a dual meaning, the first and perhaps the most obvious being an allusion to the shape of Army tents employed in serving field installations. Less clear but more important is the reference to the Battalion’s three-pronged mission of providing command, control, and planning for medical units.
The two serpents bookending the maroon cross (maroon is the color associated with Army Medical Department units) symbolize the two campaigns in which the unit participated in World War II: the green background stands for the Rhineland campaign, and the fleur-de-lis superimposed on the cross represents the campaign in Central Europe. (The Battalion also earned campaign participation credits for the Defense of Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Shield and the Liberation and Defense of Kuwait during Desert Shield and Desert Storm.) AD CURANDOS MILITES, the unit motto, is Latin for “To See To The Curing Of Soldiers.”
The 85th Medical Battalion was originally constituted on 22 February 1944 and was one of just a handful of Army units to never undergo redesignation. It was activated 5 April 1944 at Camp Pickett (today's Fort Barfoot) in Virginia and served in the European-African-Middle Eastern Theater during World War II (see above for campaign credit information). Inactivated on 31 January 1946 while still in Germany, the Battalion was allotted to the Regular Army more than twenty years later on 27 September 1966 and activated 21 November 1966 at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland. It is unclear when the Battalion was inactivated or disbanded, but its legacy lives in the form of a street named after it—85th Medical Battalion—at Fort George G. Meade.