Richard Geoffrey Pine-Coffin - Later Life

Later Life

In August 1945 he was promoted to substantive major; he continued to command the 7th Battalion as a temporary lieutenant-colonel, serving in the Far East and Palestine, until he left them in 1947. He was Mentioned in Despatches for service in Burma in 1946. He was promoted to the substantive rank of lieutenant-colonel on 3 July 1948 and took command of the 1st Battalion, The Devonshire Regiment in Malaya. Pine-Coffin commanded the battalion through the early stages of the Malayan Emergency and oversaw its move to Colchester in February 1951. He received a further Mention in Despatches for his Malayan service.

He left the Devons soon after, returning to the Parachute Regiment as its regimental colonel and commander of Depot The Parachute Regiment and Airborne Forces, a post he held from 1952 to 1955. He then became commandant of the Army MT School and garrison commander at Bordon. He retired on 20 December 1958 and was granted the honorary rank of colonel with reserve liability (which expired in 1963). He died on 28 February 1974, in the Royal Naval Hospital Haslar, survived by his son Peter.

Pine-Coffin's World War II diaries were the basis for the 2003 book The Tale of Two Bridges, adapted by Barbara Maddox and self-published by his son, Peter Pine-Coffin.