“five American troops”
This is something that has gotten on my nerves for years. They should employ the term soldiers. The proper use of the word troops should be to refer to larger groups. In my opinion, the media has been doing this deliberately to inflate the size of our military commitments.
“They should employ the term soldiers. The proper use of the word troops should be to refer to larger groups.”
We have all branches of the service fighting there so “soldiers” isn’t appropriate either. English doesn’t seem to have a generic term except “service members”.
When I write cards & letters to be included in care packages sent by two groups to which I belong, I have to use the salutation “Dear Service Member” (or “Dear Hero”) because I don’t know where or to whom or to which branch the card/letter/package are going.