Said soldiers set no diet (9)
I believe the answer is:
mentioned
'said' is the definition.
(mentioning is a kind of saying)
'soldiers set no diet' is the wordplay.
'soldiers' becomes 'men' (men can mean a group of soldiers).
'set' indicates anagramming the letters (instruction to set the letters).
'no'+'diet'='nodiet'
'nodiet' is an anagram of 'tioned'.
'men'+'tioned'='MENTIONED'
(Other definitions for mentioned that I've seen before include "Brought up" , "Made reference to" .)