Commandant Marjorie Fletcher RIP

Kyt · Oct 23, 2008

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article4995252.ece

Marjorie Fletcher, known to friends and family as “Kelsey”, was educated at Avondale High School and Sutton Coldfield High School for Girls and at 16 obtained employment as a solicitor’s clerk. In 1953 she joined the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) as a rating telegraphist.

Within three years she was commissioned and during the next 20 years rose from third officer to chief officer, serving in careers advice, Intelligence and staff apppointments. She enjoyed two tours to Malta, the second in 1964 on the staff of the C-in-C Allied Forces Mediterranean.

Noted by contemporaries as a “bright and cheerful person”, Fletcher was sent to Naples in 1979 to attend the Nato staff course. On return she was appointed to a challenging post on the directing staff of the naval staff college which automatically conferred the coveted “passed staff college” (psc) on her service record.

She was then promoted to superintendent and spent three years in Nato headquarters in Brussels as assistant director of international and bilateral relations within the international military staff. Subordinate to the political structure of Nato and quite distinct from the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (Shape), the International Staff and International Military Staff serviced the top-level Military Committee, administered certain Nato programmes and carried out high-level political, military and civil emergency planning.

This post was followed by assistant directorship and subsequently as director of the naval staff duties division in the MoD, she being the first WRNS officer in such a post. She became Director of the WRNS in 1986. Retiring in 1988, she was appointed CBE.

In 1989 many Wrens past and present met at the Imperial War Museum, London, to launch their first full history of the service and celebrate the publication of The WRNS, a book written by Marjorie Fletcher. A tribute to all former and serving Wrens, the book describes their First World War service and their subsequent disbandment followed by their hurried reformation and huge expansion from April 1939; it combines this chronology with memoirs and archive material. The book has been described in bibliographies as “the best illustrated history to date”.

Commandant Marjorie Fletcher, CBE, Director Women’s Royal Naval Service, 1986-88, was born on September 21, 1932. She died on October 11, 2008, aged 76
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Brian S · Oct 23, 2008

Marjorie Fletcher

Kyt,
did the Lady work for C.O.B.S.E.O.

Although there is nothing in the text I have a feeling she did.

Antipodean Andy · Oct 23, 2008

A 35-year career with the service and, it would seem, an authority on the subject. RIP.

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