History
Given the go-ahead by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery as a morale-boosting magazine for British Liberation Army troops then fighting in Europe, the first fortnightly edition of SOLDIER was printed on presses in Brussels in March 1945. It was conceived by Colonel Sean Fielding (later to become Editor of The Tatler and Daily Express) while he was serving in the Western Desert. Its first editor was Philip 'Pip' Youngman Carter (himself the husband of detective fiction writer Margery Allingham) who, in due course, also went on to become editor of The Tatler. A reporter from SOLDIER was one of the first to record the horrors of the Belsen concentration camp and the magazine's "scoops" included revealing the secret engineering feat of Operation Pluto.
The publication was expected to disappear as peace and normality returned but survived to become the house magazine of the entire British Army. As the Armed Forces reduced in size after the Second World War, so the magazine's circulation declined to fewer than 20,000 by the end of the 1980s. It was radically redesigned in October 1997 and changed from fortnightly to monthly publication. It is printed by Wyndeham (Roche).
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