Mess

A mess (also called a messdeck aboard ships) is an area where military personnel socialize, eat, and (in some cases) live. In some societies this military usage has extended to other disciplined services eateries such as civilian fire fighting and police forces. The root of mess is the Old French mes, "portion of food" (cf. modern French mets), drawn from the Latin verb mittere, meaning "to send" and "to put" (cf. modern French mettre), the original sense being "a course of a meal put on the table"; cfr. also the modern Italian portata with the same meaning, past participle of portare, to bring. This sense of mess, which appeared in English in the 13th century, was often used for cooked or liquid dishes in particular, as in the "mess of pottage" (porridge or soup). By the 15th century, a group of people who ate together were also called a mess, and it is this sense that persists in the "mess halls" of the modern military.

Canada

Messing in the Canadian Forces generally follows the British model (see United Kingdom below), from whom most traditions have descended. Basic regulations regarding the establishment and administration of messes is contained in the Queen's Regulations and Orders and the Canadian Forces Administrative Orders.

Messé

Messé is a commune in the Deux-Sèvres department in western France.

See also

References

Mess (album)

Mess is an album released by the British group Fila Brazillia on Pork Recordings in 1996.

Track listing

References

Army

An army (from Latin arma "arms, weapons" via Old French armée, "armed" (feminine)) or ground force is a fighting force that fights primarily on land. In the broadest sense, it is the land-based military branch, service branch or armed service of a nation or state. It may also include other branches of the military such as the air force via means of aviation corps. Within a national military force, the word army may also mean a field army. They differ from army reserves who are activated only during such times as war or natural disasters.

In several countries, the army is officially called the Land Army to differentiate it from an air force called the Air Army, notably France. In such countries, the word "army" on its own retains its connotation of a land force in common usage. The current largest army in the world, by number of active troops, is the People's Liberation Army of China with 2,250,000 active troops and 800,000 reserve personnel followed by the Indian Army with 1,129,000 active troops and 2,142,900 reserve personnel.

Army (1944 film)

Army (陸軍 Rikugun) is a 1944 Japanese film directed by Keisuke Kinoshita and starring Chishū Ryū and Kinuyo Tanaka. It is best known for its final scene, which Japanese wartime censors found troubling.

Army tells the story of three generations of a Japanese family and their relationship with the army from the Meiji era through the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Ryu plays the man of the middle generation, Tomohiko, and Tanaka his wife Waka. A large portion of the movie concerns Ryu's and Tanaka's concern that their oldest son Shintaro will be too weak to become a good soldier and their efforts to mold him into one. Other portions of the movie include Tomohiko's own exclusion from fighting during the Russo-Japanese War due to illness, and his later indignation when a friend suggests that Japan could lose a war.

In the wordless final scene of the movie, Shintaro marches off with the army for deployment in the invasion of Manchuria. Tanaka's character runs alongside him tearfully and expresses her anxiety over his well-being. Japanese wartime censors were upset by this scene because Japanese mothers in films were supposed be depicted as being proud to send their sons to battle, and not being at all upset about it. According to film critic Donald Richie, the scene was spared being cut because arguably Tanaka's emotions were caused by her internal conflict between her duty to be happy to send her son off to war and her own selfishness by loving and trying to possess him.Criterion Collection essayist Michael Koresky and others attribute the fact that the script escaped censorship of this scene to the fact that the scene is wordless, and so in the script it merely states "The mother sees the son off at the station.” Koresky attributes the scene's power to purely cinematic elements, i.e., "expressive cutting, the variations in camera distance, Tanaka’s stunning performance."

List of Soviet armies

An army, besides the generalized meanings of ‘a country's armed forces’ or its ‘land forces’, is a type of formation in militaries of various countries, including the Soviet Union. This article serves a central point of reference for Soviet armies without individual articles, and explains some of the differences between Soviet armies and their U.S. and British counterparts.

During the Russian Civil War, most Soviet armies consisted of independent rifle and cavalry divisions, and corps were rare. During World War II, Soviet armies included the all-arms (общевойсковые), tank (танковые), air (воздушные), and air-defence (противо-воздушной обороны (ПВО)) armies which included a number of corps, divisions, brigades, regiments and battalions belonging largely to the appropriate branch of the armed forces or of the arm of service, such as the rifle corps. In the emergency of June 1941 it was found that inexperienced commanders had difficulty controlling armies with more than two or three subordinate corps, and they several armies were disbanded, to be reformed later in the war. Thus Soviet High Command's (Stavka's) Circular 01, of July 15, 1941, directed several changes to Red Army force structure, including the elimination of rifle corps headquarters and subordination of rifle divisions directly to rifle army headquarters. Following the Second World War, an army was reorganised with four or five divisions, often equivalent to a corps in the militaries of other countries. During a war, an Army of the Soviet military was typically subordinated to a front. In peacetime, an army was usually subordinated to a military district.