What does "troop" mean in "[...] 300 glider troops had drowned at sea"?

Question

the Allied commanders were appalled to learn that 300 glider troops had drowned at sea.

300 glider "troops" mean one troop with 300 gliders or there were different troops(first second,,, three hundredth troop)?

Answer 1

There's two confusing meanings of "troops". In the plural, the word can mean either several groups of soldiers, or several individual soldiers.

In this context, it means 300 individual soldiers who were all glider infantry.

Answer 2

In theory, the word troop might have another interpretation. “300-glider troops” could, in some context, even mean multiple units of 300 gliders each.

In practice, “troops” is more commonly a synonym for “troopers,” unless someone is specifically talking about the unit of cavalry. (Some groups of children on wilderness trips are also called “scout troops” after them.) But you need to determine this from context. “Troops” as a reference to units does not make sense here (although you need a bit of background in military history to know why: the U.S. and British armies called their soldiers on gliders infantry rather than cavalry, the two armies had cavalry “troops” of such different sizes that a combined Anglo-American command would not use that term without saying which one they were thinking of, and three hundred troops of U.S. Cavalry would have been a loss of as many as thirty thousand men).

The Wikipedia page for the U.S. Cavalry, however, does use both meanings ambiguously. The sentence, “In March 1777, Washington established the Corps of Continental Light Dragoons consisting of four regiments of 280 men, each organized in six troops,” is referring to six military units of cavalry. But in the paragraph before that, we read, “Washington personally witnessed the effect of a small force of the 17th Light Dragoons had on his troops,” which is referring to the soldiers in his infantry. Later, we see the sentence, “In 1796, the number of troops was reduced to only two, which were amalgamated in 1798 with six newly raised troops to the Regiment of Regiment of Light Dragoons.” In context, this is also referring to cavalry units, not cavalry soldiers, because that is the only way the numbers make sense.

That kind of ambiguity is not good writing at all, but you should expect to encounter it.

Answer 3

To add some more information to the good answers already present, it appears that in US English troops (in the plural form) can legitimately be used essentially as a synonym for troopers when speaking collectively.

From Cambridge Online Dictionary , compare:

troops
_{plural noun, US}

soldiers on duty in a large group:

Thousands of troops have been stationed in the region for several years.