Senior Army bod, British, a contemptible person to Americans (5,3)
I believe the answer is:
brass hat
'senior' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'army bod british a contemptible person to americans' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'british' could be 'br' and 'br' is found within the answer.
'a' is present in the answer.
This may be the basis of clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for brass hat that I've seen before include "Certainly no private" , "Top 22 person" , "High-ranking army officer" , "official of the first rank" , "High-ranking military officer" .)