As Loach mentions, “grunt” is slang for infantry. “Joes” would be slang for low ranking soldiers in the Army. “Boot” for low ranking Marines.
I’ve heard “grunts” used to refer either to infantry or to low ranking troops. Depends on context.
In the Air Force, I’ve heard “Slick-Sleeve” used to describe Airmen Basic (most folks don’t keep that rank for long, and it’s not at all rare to graduate Basic Training with two stripes (Airman First Class, or E-3, not to be confused with the two-stripe Corporal (E-4) NCO ranks the Army and Marines have). Otherwise we just call the new guys “New Guys”.
That said, my career field is pretty small, and it’s not unheard of for someone to arrive at their new unit from Basic and make Senior Airman before another new guy gets sent out. At one point we had three Senior Airmen and one Staff Sergeant in our shop, and all three Senior Airmen had come directly from Basic Training as Airmen. For all I know there is a hilarious nickname for new airmen but we don’t get them often enough in my career field to need it 
By who? Air Force people? Or probably Army POGs? I have no doubt that POGs would use call each other grunt or decide that it has a different meaning. These would be the same people who say “we are pretty much infantry”.
Grunt means infantry, or at the very least, a combat arms soldier in the shit. It does not mean “low ranking pac clerk” to anyone but another POG.
And come to think of it, just look at the word POG: Person Other than Grunt. If “grunt” meant “low rank” than a POG would be any high ranking person. That is not the case at all.
Not necessarily. If you expect language to be consistent and clear in use, you’re gonna be in for a rough time.
As a side note, every time I see “POG”, I know what it means, and how it’s pronounced, but I just picture the milk cap game from the 90s. Would that make infantry “Slammers”?
No. Chunkies.
I saw this thread yesterday, and then just now I was reading a memoir written by a Red Army lieutenant in the second world war. He described a situation where he was running along the line trying to roust each of his men in order to get them to move forward under fire, and after the battle he was being teased for having run along the lines instead of running forward in the direction of the attack. He quotes one of his colleagues:
“No, he drew German fire on himself, to make it easier for the Slavs (this is what we called soldiers on the front) to attack the Fritzes.”
Obviously, I’m reading this in translation, so I don’t know what the actual Russian word would be, but it seems at least in the summer of 1944, the Russians were using the Russian word for “Slav” in a manner similar to “grunt.”
And if you think the fact that you’ve heard the word misused a few times in the Air Force is proof that the meaning has changed… well, you’re simply mistaken.
In the corporate world, “grunt” can mean an unskilled worker, laborer or entry level position. Maybe that’s what it means in the Air Force as well. Possibly, since you don’t actually have grunts, you would stick closer to the civilian/business use of the word.
But in the Army (which is relevant since the OP mentions soldiers), it means infantryman. There is no other accepted definition. This is also true for the Marine Corps. Grunts are ground pounders out in the shit. You guys can playfully call each other “grunt” all day long on the flight line, and that’s cute. But it doesn’t change the meaning.
:rolleyes: Very sorry, very sorry, kowtows out the door 
If the Pioneer Corps are sappers, I’d guess that Chunkies refers to their condition after a mistake. (Boom! Eww.)
“There are only two branches of the military. The Army and the Navy. The Air Force is a corporation and the Marine Corps is a cult.”
Thank you for making the Dr Thunder I was drinking come out my nose. I’m still giggling even after cleaning the laptop.
In Hebrew, the term for enlisted men with no-one under their command is “Hapash” or “Chapash”, which is an acronym for “Chayal Pashut” - meaning “simple/regular/ordinary soldier”. It’s rather boring, actually; a rare case in which official military terminology hasn’t been replaced by slang.
Infantrymen are “Chirnikim” - the abbreviation “Chir” for “Cheyl Raglim” (literally “Foot Corps”) plus the diminutive “-nik”, which Hebrew stole form Russian and put to extensive us.
Don’t mind it at all. I welcome tanks in the field. Especially when it’s freezing and wet! The exhaust from an Abrams will dry a sleeping bag in like 30 seconds… if it doesn’t melt it first.
Do fictional languages count? In Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Martian novels, he called such soldiers “panthans.”
I understood the Intelligence Corps were referred to as the Green Slime on account of the colour of their beret? Maybe “clever c***s” was reserved for polite company? 