(UK, US, abbreviation, alt-of, initialism, slang) Initialism of rear-echelon motherfucker, a soldier assigned or stationed far from the front line, especially during the Vietnam War.
Back at the PXs, the REMFs (rear-echelon motherfuckers) […] were indulging in black-market schemes and pleasures while Stone and his buddies out humping the boonies did the fighting, putting their lives on the line. 2004, Martin Torgoff, “Next Stop is Vietnam”, in Can’t Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age, 1945–2000, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 175: