firm base
n.— «Half of the firm base (the military term for a small, austere outpost) is occupied by the Marines, while half is for the Iraqis.» —“Iraq Journal: It’s all Arabic to them” by Julian E. Barnes in Fallujah, Iraq U.S. News & World Report July 1, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
A California listener shares a couple of pranks from her time in the U.S. Marines, where unsuspecting recruits would be ordered to complete impossible tasks. She remembers that newbies would be sent to retrieve a bucket of frequency grease or a...
Is there such a thing as a “neutral” accent, and if so what does it sound like? And that quirk in the way southern Californians talk about freeways. They’ll say things like take the 405 and get on the 8. Why the definite article...