Despair for one pair of soldiers (5)
I believe the answer is:
giant
'pair of soldiers' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both groups as well as being singular nouns.
Perhaps there's a link between them I don't understand?
'despair for one' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'one' could be 'an' (an apple is one apple) and 'an' is found in the answer.
The remaining letters 'git' 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 giant that I've seen before include "Huge; James Dean film" , "James Dean film (big one!)" , "Monster" , "Titan" , "Very big person" .)