A child of a member of the regular army. Although brat is not a flattering term, the phrase is not at all derogatory. It dates from the first half of the 1900s. Because regular army personnel often are transferred from station to station, their children frequently had to change schools, and this circumstance is what is most often referred to. A New York Post article in 1971 had it, “I was in sixteen different grammar schools. Then I’d be whisked away because my father was in the Army and I was an Army brat.”