private soldier

One of the officers revealed that although Yurii ranks as a simple private soldier, he basically runs this unit.

Once, I actually did start out of bed in the night, and begin to dress myself in my worst clothes, hurriedly intending to leave him there with everything else I possessed, and enlist for India as a private soldier.

He had worked in Whitehall as a private soldier before he was posted to Germany in the 1990s, and later returned to the UK as a civil servant for the Ministry of Defence.

On the first night, when they were sheltering in the bike shed of a burned-out school, Corporal Nettle said, “What’s a private soldier like you doing talking like a toff?”

Even the lowliest private soldier had decided that the war would not be fought in the trenches again.