ghost soldier n. a soldier who is enlisted or placed on active duty but does not serve; a fake name listed as an active-duty soldier. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Iranian-American poet Solmaz Sharif once observed that “The duty of the writer…is to remind us that we will die. And that we aren’t dead yet.” This is part of a complete episode.
Related
Loretta in Shreveport, Louisiana, wants to know what lexical and dialectal clues linguists look for when guessing where someone is from. She also wonders: Do people with long careers in the military or who grew up in a military family have a...