Woman beginning to encourage and tend soldiers (7)
I believe the answer is:
eleanor
'woman' is the definition.
'beginning to encourage and tend soldiers' is the wordplay.
'beginning to' indicates taking the first letters.
'and' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'tend' becomes 'lean' ('lean' can be a synonym of 'tend').
'soldiers' becomes 'or' (Other Rank).
The first letter of 'encourage' is 'e'.
'e'+'lean'+'or'='ELEANOR'
(Other definitions for eleanor that I've seen before include "Consort of Henry II" , "Henry II's wife; Beatles' Rigby" , "A reel by Ringo (anag) -- Beatles song" , "Name used in Beatles song" , "girl" .)