Corps
In many armies, a corps is a battlefield formation composed of two or more divisions, and typically commanded by a lieutenant general.
Following the commencement of the Pacific War, there was a phased withdrawal of I Corps to Australia, and the transfer of its headquarters to the Brisbane area, to control Allied army units in Queensland and northern New South Wales (NSW).
After the Armistice, the peacetime Canadian militia was nominally organized into corps and divisions but no full-time formations larger than a battalion were ever trained or exercised.
Early in the Second World War, Canada's contribution to the British-French forces fighting the Germans was limited to a single division.
After the fall of France in June 1940, a second division moved to England, coming under command of a Canadian corps headquarters.
After losses in the early part of the war, under the 1938 reforms, the remaining scarce artillery and the other support formations were withdrawn from the division and was held at corps, or army level or higher.
The corps was designed to be an independent military group containing cavalry, artillery and infantry, and capable of defending against a numerically superior foe.
This allowed Napoleon I to mass the bulk of his forces to effect a penetration into a weak section of enemy lines without risking his own communications or flank.
The Polish Armed Forces used independent operational groups in the place of the corps before and during World War II.
When the British Army was expanded from an expeditionary force in the First World War, corps were created to manage the large numbers of divisions.
It is no longer a purely British formation, although the UK is the "framework nation" and provides most of the staff for the headquarters.
[5] Major General George B. McClellan, for example, planned to organize the Army of the Potomac into corps of two or more divisions and about 25,000 soldiers.
[6] The exact composition of a corps in the Union Army varied during the war, though it usually consisted of between two and six division (on average three) for approximately 36,000 soldiers.
This staff consisted of a chief of cavalry, a chief of artillery, and representatives of the War Department's various bureaus:[9] an assistant adjutant general, a quartermaster, an assistant inspector general, a commissary of subsistence, an ordnance officer (all with the rank of lieutenant colonel), and a medical director.
[6][8] Although designated with numbers that are sometimes the same as those found in the modern US Army, there is no direct lineage between the 43 Union field corps of the Civil War and those with similar names in the modern era, due to congressional legislation caused by the outcry from veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic during the Spanish–American War.
On 7 May, General Order 36 called for the establishment of seven "army corps" (repeating the nomenclature of the Civil War); an eighth was authorized later that month.
During World War I, the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) adopted the common European usage of designating field corps by Roman numerals.
Several "corps areas" were designated under the authority of the National Defense Act of 1920, but played little role until the Army's buildup for World War II.
[14] However, after the war started, the recently purged Soviet senior command (Stavka) structure was apparently unable to handle the formations, and the armies and corps were integrated.
Rifle corps were re-established during the war after Red Army commanders had gained experience handling larger formations.
The Vyborg and Archangel Corps of the Leningrad Military District were smaller armies with three low-readiness motorized rifle divisions each.
The purpose of the such a corps is to protect important administrative, industrial and economic centers and regions of the country, groupings of troops (forces) and military facilities within the established limits of responsibility against air strikes.
In June 1954, for the defense of the main industrial and economic centers and regions of the USSR, 10 air defence corps were re-created.
At the same time, in addition to anti-aircraft artillery formations, fighter aviation regiments and divisions were included in the corps.
In Australia, soldiers belong foremost to a corps which defines a common function or employment across the army.
The Australian Army has a system of coloured lanyards, which each identify a soldier as part of a specific corps (or sometimes individual battalion).
[20] If a soldier is posted to a unit outside of their parent corps, except in some circumstances the soldier continues to wear the hat badge of their corps (e.g. a supply technician posted to an infantry battalion would wear the hat badge of the Royal New Zealand Army Logistic Regiment.
* Each of these corps is also considered a regiment for purposes of: "... affiliation, ... loyalty and commitment, ... sense of belonging, ... unit esprit, and ... war fighting ethos."
These officers are specialists in career fields that are professions unto themselves, such as ministers, civil engineers, architects, dentists, lawyers, physicians, healthcare administrators, healthcare scientists, clinical care providers, nurses, financial managers, and logistics and supply specialists.
However, subsequent formations of non-military ambulance squads continued to use the term, even where they adhere less to paramilitary organizational structure.
