The U.S. Army Military Personnel Center Shoulder Sleeve Insignia, or unit patch, was approved on 22 June 1977 and worn until 1 October 1987.
Inside the pentagon-shaped insignia that identifies the Military Personnel Center (MILPERCEN) as a Field Operating Agency of the Headquarters, Department of the Army is a gridlined globe inside an embattled defense works. The globe symbolizes the worldwide scope of the Center’s management of Soldiers, which are represented by the upright sword superimposed on the globe. The defense works are an allusion to the Center’s mission of maintaining personnel readiness at all times. Almost everything in the insignia is rendered in red, yellow, or blue, the colors of the three combat arms of the Army: Infantry, Armor/Cavalry, and Artillery.
The predecessor of today’s U.S. Army Human Resources Command was the U.S. Army Military Personnel Center established in 1973 through the consolidation of several agencies and activities in the nation’s capital aimed to centralize personnel-management operations for officers and enlisted Soldiers. Offices and agencies under the purview of MILPERCEN included the Officer Personnel Directorate;, the Enlisted Personnel Directorate; the Personnel Management Development Directorate; Personnel Information Systems Directorate; and the Personnel Actions and Records Directorate.
In 1988, MILPERCEN was consolidated with the Army’s Civilian Personnel Center, Physical Disability Agency, and the Drug and Alcohol Operations Agency to create the U.S. Total Army Personnel Agency, quickly redesignated as the Total Army Personnel Command and later known as Department of the Army, Personnel Command, or DA PERSCOM. U.S. Army Human Resources Command was formed in October 2003 when DA PERSCOM was merged with the Army’s Reserve Personnel Command and the U.S. Army Enlisted Records and Evaluation Center, or EREC, in Indianapolis.