Referred to soldiers on diet, strangely (9)
I believe the answer is:
mentioned
'referred to' is the definition.
('mention' can be a synonym of 'refer to')
'soldiers on diet strangely' is the wordplay.
'soldiers' becomes 'men' (men can mean a group of soldiers).
'strangely' is an anagram indicator.
'on'+'diet'='ondiet'
'ondiet' is an anagram of 'tioned'.
'men'+'tioned'='MENTIONED'
(Other definitions for mentioned that I've seen before include "Brought up" , "Made reference to" .)