Our practice is to always go by the first descriptive unit (in this case ' United States. Army'), since the rest are just subdivisions or further refinements of it.  So we'd do this as a corpname.

Michele

-----Original Message-----
From: Encoded Archival Description List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Michael Fox
Sent: Wednesday, September 18, 2013 12:53 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: EAD encoding question

There is an encoding situation about which I would like to have a sense of community practice.

I have a very small collection that includes the typescript of an individual's recounting of his experience as a member of the U.S. Army during World War 2.

I have determined that the following access point would be useful for directing users to this collection:

United States. Army--History--World war, 1939-1945--Personal reminiscences, American.

The first part of this heading is clearly a corporate name, the balance a topical subject.

Would you encode this as <corpname> or <subject>?

Thanks for your thoughts.

Michael Fox