Charles Coleman

Lieutenant-General Sir Cyril Frederick Charles Coleman, (16 April 1903 – 17 June 1974) was a senior British Army officer. Early life Charles Coleman was born in Stonehouse, Plymouth, Devon, in 1903, the son of Albert Edward Coleman of Downderry, Cornwall, and Adelaide Maxwell Moore, of Seaforth, Lancashire. He was educated at Plymouth College and at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Welch Regiment in 1923. Military career Coleman served with his regiment in China, Malaya and India during the interwar period. On 30 August 1925 he was promoted to lieutenant. He was appointed adjutant of the 2nd Battalion of his regiment from 1932 to 1935. During the Second World War, Coleman commanded the 4th Battalion, Welch Regiment from 1941 to 1944 and took over as acting commander of the 160th Infantry Brigade, his battalion's parent formation, in late 1943, before Brigadier Lashmer Whistler arrived in January 1944 to take command, with Coleman returning to commanding the 4th Welch. In June 1944 Coleman succeeded Whistler, who had been reassigned to command the 3rd Division, in command of the brigade, leading it throughout the campaign in North-West Europe from Normandy very nearly to the borders of Denmark by way of Falaise, Antwerp, Nijmegen, 's-Hertogenbosch, Wessem, the Ardennes, the Reichswald, the Rhine, the Weser, and Hamburg. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) in 1945 and the Dutch Knight 4th Class of the Military Order of William in 1947. As his brigade major wrote after his death, the respect the men of the brigade had for him "probably gave him as much pleasure and satisfaction as any of his later achievements". Certainly he wrote very warmly of the achievements of the 53rd (Welsh) Infantry Division, of which his brigade formed a part, in his preface to the history of its part in the Second World War, published in 1955, and as its author makes clear, he made a considerable contribution to this account.