Says sorry for a shirt on soldier from State Emergency Service (10)
I believe the answer is:
apologises
'says' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both to do with communicating as well as being verbs in their -s form.
Maybe you can see an association between them that I don't see?
'sorry for a shirt on soldier from state emergency service' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'a' is present in the answer.
'shirt' could be 'polo' (polo shirt is a kind of shirt) and 'polo' is located in the answer.
'soldier' could be 'gi' (term for US soldier) and 'gi' is found in the answer.
'from' could be 'e' (I've seen this in other clues) and 'e' is present in the answer.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?