Weapon of the ordinary British soldier? (5,3)
I believe the answer is:
tommy gun
'weapon of the ordinary british' is the definition.
'Tommy gun' can be an answer for 'weapon' (Tommy gun is an example). I'm not sure about the 'of the ordinary british' bit.
'soldier?' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'soldier?' could be 'tommy' (I've seen this before) and 'tommy' is found within the answer.
The remaining letters 'gun' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't see.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for tommy gun that I've seen before include "Weapon named after its US designer, John T. Thompson" , "WWII portable automatic weapon" , "Light American weapon of WWII" , "Piece" .)