The 191st Infantry Brigade Distinctive Unit Insignia, also called a DUI or unit crest, was originally approved for the 191st Infantry Brigade Headquarters on 24 November 1939. It was redesignated for the 191st Infantry Brigade on 7 March 1967.
VIGILANTE SALIS, Latin for “Safety By Watching,” is the Brigade motto and is a direct reference to the image of the crane that is the focal point of the insignia. An old legend says that cranes are able to keep an effective watch throughout the night by standing on one leg and clutching a stone (a black disc in the insignia) in the claws of the other; if they should fall asleep, they drop the rock and the noise awakens them to resume their watch. Meanwhile, the other cranes are able to sleep, heads tucked under their wings. It serves as an excellent metaphor for the U.S. Army Reserve, the organization with which the Brigade was affiliated for more than three-quarters of a century.
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. DUIs are not worn on the Dress variations of either uniform, however.
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Originally a constituted in the Organized Reserves (which became Army Reserve after 1952) as a HQ and HQ Company, the 191st Infantry Brigade was assigned to the 95th Division on 24 June 1921. After several redesignations it was converted and redesignated as the 96th Reconnaissance Troop, 96th Division on 6 April 1942 and ordered into military service on 15 April 1942 at Camp Adair, Oregon, where it was reorganized again as the 96th Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop, an element of the 96th Infantry Division.
In August 1943 it was reorganized and redesignated again as the 96th Reconnaissance Troop, Mechanized, and as part of the 96th Infantry Division it fought in two campaigns in the Asiatic-Pacific Theater, Leyte and Ryukyus, earning an Arrowhead device for taking part in an assault landing in the Leyte campaign. Reorganized and redesignated as the 96th Mechanized Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop on 20 November 1945, the unit was inactivated less for eleven months between February 1946 and January 1947, when it was reactivated at Spokane.
It underwent one more reorganization (as the 96th Reconnaissance Company in 1949) before finally being designated once again as an Infantry Brigade in November 1962, specifically as Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 191st Infantry Brigade. The Brigade was inactivated on 29 February 1968 at Helena, Montana, and some 20-plus years later it was withdrawn from the U.S. Army Reserve, allotted to the Regular Army, and its HQ activated at Fort Lewis, Washington on 24 October 1997. Inactivated just two years later in 1999, it would undergo another period of inactivation—nearly seven years this time around—before its HQ was again activated at Fort Lewis on 1 December 2006.
The 191st Infantry Brigade was inactivated in 2014, with an official ceremony in which the Brigade’s colors were cased held on 8 January 2014 at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.