chocolate soldier

plural chocolate soldiers

1. Digger slangSomeone who is unwilling to fight.

   I thought he was a chocolate soldier which was probably unfair—everyone said he had done the “right thing” in the Canada campaign.

   2010, Robert Moss, Fire Along the Sky: Being the Adventures of Captain Shane Hardacre in the New World, SUNY Press, page 51

   2 more examples

   To the maids across the way he was Julia's beau, and if not quite Beau Geste, a gent and well dressed. Obviously he was a chocolate soldier, a bouquet boy.

   1932, Warwick Deeping, Old wine and new, A. A. Knopf, page 152

   He described him as "a political corpse whose ghost has returned to haunt us," adding that he was "a chocolate soldier, ... a man who never faced an enemy nor successfully faced an issue."

   1965, Joseph Rosner, The haters' handbook, Delacorte Press, page 195

2. The butterfly Junonia iphita, the chocolate pansy.