Kerry's sing. "troop"

[Mark A. Mandel]

Coincidentally (I *refuse* to [mis]use "ironically"here!), I've just spotted
a similar use of "forces" for counting individual (putative) combatants:

[...] company was responsible for the capture of over 450 Iraqi and
insurgent forces.

In starting off this thread, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>>
   If you want to be utterly inclusive and maximally concise, and you don't
like the use of "warrior," you may find yourself at a loss for words. What
to do ? You say "troop." "Troop" sounds very wrong - not to mention absurd -
to us antediluvians, but it could be another vibrant precursor of tomorrow's
everyday Inglish.
 <<<

But here the reference has to be even broader, including persons who are not
members of any formal armed service; hence (I speculate) "forces".

BTW, this comes from a piece of military formal prose: "JUSTIFICATION FOR
THE AWARD OF THE LEGION OF MERIT TO [rank] [name] / [regiment] [brigade]
[division]".

m a m

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