Its objectives include providing a channel of welfare information; promoting the British Army's image internally and externally; and contributing to the upkeep of morale within the Service.
The publication's robust and oversubscribed correspondence pages, which allow serving personnel to air grievances, criticise procedure and raise areas of concern, further indicate that the readership is genuinely engaged with the magazine.
After some initial misgivings about "washing dirty linen in public" the Army's chain of command is now fully signed up to the section, regarding it both as a valuable pressure valve for serving personnel with grievances, and confirmation of issues flagged up by the MOD's independent Continuous Attitude Surveys and the Chief of the General Staff's Briefing Team.
Given the go-ahead by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery as a morale-boosting magazine for British Liberation Army troops then fighting in Europe during the Second World War, the first fortnightly edition of SOLDIER was printed in Brussels in March 1945.
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.