Sentence:  Suddenly, [...] he saw all this as romantic — the last <WSD>legionary</WSD>, his aloneness, the lost cause really lost — and instinctively he pulled in his paunch, stroked down his hair to cover the naked part of the scalp, and wiped the sweat off his cheeks. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  A soldier belonging to a legion; a professional soldier of the ancient Roman army.