Career
She served as Director of the Women"s Royal Army Corps from 1977 to 1982. Field began her military career as a private in the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS). She had joined the ATS in September 1947, having been exempt from conscription during World World War II because she had been a university student.
Following training, her first posting was as a clerical instructor with the rank of lance corporal.
She was selected for officer training and benefited from having instructors that had seen active service during the war. She was commissioned in December 1948 as a second subaltern (equivalent to second lieutenant).
Her first posting as an officer was as a platoon commander based in the United Kingdom. On 1 February 1949, the ATS became the Women"s Royal Army Corps (WRAC).
Therefore, she became an officer of the WRAC and, for the first time, became subject to military law.
She had applied for overseas service upon her commission. The opportunity came for this during the Malayan Emergency (1948 to 1960) and she was posted to Singapore. From 1951 to 1953, she served there as officer commanding of the 4th Independent Company, WRAC.
A unit of 400 female personnel.
She returned to England at the end of her posting to Singapore. In 1953, she attended a six-month course at the WRAC Staff College, Frimley Park.
Having completed the course, she was posted to the Staff Duties branch of the War Office. Her next posting were as a staff officer of the London University WRAC Officer Training Corps, and then as adjutant of 317 (Scottish) TA Battalion WRAC. In 1961, she was promoted to major and appointed chief instructor at the WRAC Centre, Guildford.
In 1963, after two years as an instructor, she was posted as a grade 2 staff officer to Headquarters Middle East Command in Aden.
The British Colony of Aden had become the State of Aden but there was an insurgency against British rule that became the Aden Emergency. She was responsible for the welfare of soldiers and their families based in the region. She had the additional role of notifying the families of casualties and her experience of the conditions that they had faced gave her letters authenticity.
Having served in Aden in the 1960s during the Aden Emergency, she became patron of the Aden Veterans" Association in 2002.
