Corps (pronounced kore)
(1) A military body with a specific function
(intelligence corps, medical corps etc).
(2) A military unit of ground combat forces
consisting of two or more divisions and other troops.
(3) A group of persons associated or acting
together (diplomatic corps; press corps etc).
(4) In printing, a continental designation that,
preceded by a number, indicates size of type in Didot points of 0.0148 inches (3.8 mm).
(5) An alternative word for a corpse (obsolete).
(6) In classical ballet, as the corps de ballet, the group of dancers
who are not soloists
1225-1275; Middle English corps and Middle French cors, both from Latin corpus (body), from the primitive Indo-European kwerp- (body, form, appearance). The sense in English evolved from "dead body" in the thirteenth century to "live body" in the next to eventually be understood as "body of citizens" in the fifteenth. The modern military sense (dating from 1704) was from French corps d'armée, picked up in English during the Duke of Marlborough's (General John Churchill, 1650–1722) campaigns, the use at the time not based on a specific number of troops but the more generalized motion of "a part of an army expressly organized and having a head". In English, pronunciation was corse at first and this persisted until the eighteenth century by which time it was archaic except for poetic use. The field corps, a tactical unit of an army and which contained two or more divisions, was one of Napoleon Bonaparte's (1769–1821; leader of the French Republic 1799-1804 & Emperor of the French from 1804-1814 & 1815) structural innovations in military re-organization although such formations, ad-hoc or planned, had long been a known feature of battlefield tactics. The word was soon extended to other organized groups under a leader, as in corps de ballet (1826) or corps diplomatique (1796), although with the latter, the leader (dean of the diplomatic corps) is an appointment for ceremonial purposes, often, by convention, extended to the papal nuncio. The special use Corpsman (enlisted medical auxiliary) was used first by the US military in 1941. Corps is a noun; the noun plural is corps.
Army Formations: Indicative Size Ranges
Army Group: 400,000-2,000000
Army: 150,000-360,000
Corps: 45,000-90,000
Division: 10,000-30,000
Brigade: 1500-5000
Regiment: 1500-3500
Battalion: 500-1500
Company: 175-250
Platoon: 12-60
Squad: 4-24
Specialized formations (intelligence corps, medical corps etc) exist in all branches of the military with no rules or consistency in the numbers of their establishment. However, whereas the structures of navies (squadrons, flotillas, fleets etc) and air forces (flights, squadrons, wings, groups etc) are based on the number of vessels or airframes attached, the army (mostly) defines its organization by the number of personnel allocated, the numbers listed below generally indicative based on historic formations. Most armies use all or a subset of the above although the numbers vary (greatly). A division is made up of 3-4 brigades, a corps of 3-4 divisions and so on. In Western armies, the numbers listed above reflect the big-scale mass formations used during World War II (1939-1945); peacetime armies are a fraction of the size but the organizational framework is retained, most forces actively using only the smaller clusters. During WWII, US army command groups tended to be up to twice the size of British units though within the same army, divisions often varied in size, an infantry division usually larger than an armored. A corps can be assembled from the armies of more than one nation, the Australian & New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) being formed in 1915 prior to deployment as part of the Dardanelles Campaign. Other organizational tags such as squadron also exist but tend now either to be rare or, like battery, applied to specialized units based on function rather than size. A special case is troop which generally is an alternative word for platoon but there are exceptions.
In twenty-first century wars, entire divisions are rarely committed operationally and brigade level engagements are regarded as large-scale; in the world wars of the twentieth century (uniquely big, multi-theatre affairs), the standard battlefield unit tended to be the division and by 1944 Soviet Union was fielding nearly five-hundred. The numbers in the world wars were certainly impressive but in a sense could be deceptive, the percentage of those listed on the establishment actually committed to combat sometimes surprisingly low (though this tended to apply less to those of the USSR). One British prime-minister, pondering this, complained to the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (the CIGS one of the country's leading ornithologists) that the army reminded him “…of a peacock; all tail and very little bird”. Dryly, the field marshal (one of the country's leading ornithologists) responded by pointing out “the peacock would be a very poorly balanced bird without its tail”.
The Royal Flying Corps (RFC) was created in 1912 as the air arm of the British Army. Late in the World War I (1914-1918), it was merged with Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) to become the Royal Air Force (RAF), formed on 1 April 1918 (that it happened on April Fool's Day was not lost on wags at the Admiralty). Military aviation didn't however become exclusive to the RAF, the army retaining its own operations, mainly for communications, reconnaissance and meteorological services. The Admiralty was never entirely happy about the merger and the Fleet Air Arm (FAA), though still an operational unit of the RAF, was formed in 1924, necessitated by the launching that year of the of the Royal Navy's first aircraft carrier. By 1937, even the RAF was convinced naval aviation was different and in 1939 FAA reverted to the Admiralty, operating both from carriers and ground stations.
Military aviation in the US was formalized in 1907 with the creation of the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC); the service renamed to United States Army Air Force (USAAF) in 1941. It wasn't until 1947 when, as part of the National Security Act of that year that the US Air Force (USAF) was established as the fourth branch of the US military. Remarkably, given it was the US which in the 1940s created the parameters for modern, carrier-based warfare, the admirals, still hankering for the great set-piece, high seas clash of the battleship fleets (which would never happen, largely because of aircraft), tried in 1919 to abolish naval aviation because there was “…no use the fleet will ever have for aviation." The naval aviators ("pilots" work for the air force they say) however weren't forced to walk the plank and the navy received its first carrier in 1922 though for decades the intra and inter service squabbles would continue.
Lindsay Lohan in Vogue Australia, November, 2022 (left) and News Corporation in the 2000 Sydney-Hobart Yacht race. Created in 1952 as a supplement to the UK edition, since 2006, Vogue Australia has been published by News Corp under a licence from Condé Nast. “Corps" (as in Marine Corps, Medical Corps etc) is pronounced kore because it’s a loanword from French in which the “ps” is silent. “Corp” as an abbreviation of corporation is pronounced korp with the “p” sounded. The difference caught out one radio reporter who, when filing a story on the 2000 Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race (the blue water classic now styled usually as “Sydney Hobart”), referred to the yacht News Corporation (known universally as “News Corp”) with the pronunciation news kore.
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