Fifty thousand troops

Tim Sager, who oversees the copy desk at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, sent a comment to You Don't Say about the "troop does not mean one person!!!!" complaint:

We get the same complaint from time to time.

I always send the offended reader the following quotes from Eisenhower and Winfield Scott:

Eisenhower: “People of Western Europe: A landing was made this morning on the coast of France by troops of the Allied Expeditionary Force. ...”

“Nothing is easy in war. Mistakes are always paid for in casualties, and troops are quick to sense any blunder made by their commanders.”

In neither of these examples is Ike referring to units of cavalry commanded by a captain and equivalent to a company of foot or a battery of artillery.

The usage, of course, predates Eisenhower. It was very common during the American Civil War and in histories of that war written by Union and Confederate veterans. For example, in 1861 Yankee Gen. Winfield Scott famously said of Robert E. Lee that “Colonel Lee would be worth fifty thousand troops to our side."

Scott was no spring chicken when the Civil War began and was probably as resistant to neologisms as he was to new military tactics.

People who complain that this is a new usage haven’t been paying close attention to the language for at least 200 years – and probably much longer.

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