Demob contract soldiers found earlier (7)
I believe the answer is:
release
'demob' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'contract soldiers found earlier' is the wordplay.
'contract' means to remove the last letter (contract can mean to shorten).
'soldiers' becomes 'res'.
'found earlier' becomes 'lease' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'res' with its last letter taken away is 're'.
're'+'lease'='RELEASE'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for release that I've seen before include "Liberate" , "record" , "press announcement" , "Issue" , "Set free - publish" .)