The 339th Regiment was created in June 1918, composed mainly of young draftees, for the purpose of fighting on the Western Front in France.

On 30 July 1918, General John J. Pershing, Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) on the Western Front, by order of President Woodrow Wilson, chose the 339th Infantry Regiment, the 1st Battalion of the 310th Engineers, the 337th Field Hospital, and the 337th Ambulance Company, (all from the 85th Division) to form the Murmansk Expedition.

27 Aug 1918, the expedition, 143 officers and 4,344 enlisted men, sailed from Newcastle upon Tyne, England, and arrived Archangel, North Russia, on 4 September, where, with other Allied forces, it became part of the command of Maj Gen F. C. Poole, British Army.

The primary ROTC feeder school for new Reserve lieutenants for the regiment was the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

[4] The 339th Infantry Regiment was reactivated in 1942, during World War II, to serve in the European theater, fighting in the Allied campaign in Italy from 1944 to 1945.

On the morning of May 4, 1945, G Company of the 339th was sent to Pragser Wildsee to liberate 139 high-profile prisoners transferred there during the closing days of the war.

[6] A gold color metal and enamel device 1+5⁄32 inches (2.9 cm) in height consisting of a shield blazoned: Azure a polar bear statant on an ice cake Argent: on a canton Or a fess Sable between three martlets of the like two and one.

The polar bear on its blue background is copied from the unofficial shoulder patch of the North Russian Expeditionary Force, of which this regiment was a part during the years 1918–1919.

The canton bears a part of the coat of arms of Cadillac, the founder of Detroit, and is symbolic of the origin of the regiment and of its 1924 allocation.