Lieutenant-General John Coates
Email: j.coates@adfa.edu.au
Lieutenant-General John Coates served in the Australian Army for forty years, retiring as Chief of General Staff in 1992. He was educated at Ipswich Grammar School, Queensland, and the Royal Military College, Duntroon, from which he graduated in 1955. He returned later as its Commandant. He served on exchange with both the United States Army at Fort Hood, Texas, and the British Army as a tank squadron commander in Germany in 1966-67. He commanded a Cavalry (Armored Personnel Carrier) Squadron in South Vietnam 1970-71, for which service he was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE). He was made a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) in 1992.
He is a graduate of the University of Western Australia and has a post-graduate degree in history from the Australian National University. Since leaving the army he has written three books: Suppressing Insurgency: An Analysis of the Malayan Emergency 1948-1954 (Westview Press, Boulder, 1992); Bravery Above Blunder: the 9th Australian Division in New Guinea 1943-44 (OUP, Melbourne, 1999); and An Atlas of Australia's Wars (OUP, Melbourne, 2001, of which a second edition was published in November 2006. He is a Visiting Fellow in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of New South Wales at the Defence Force Academy, where is is pursuing aspects of Australia’s military history.
In recognition of his services to scholarship, and particularly to military history, the University of New South Wales awarded Lieutenant-General Coates in 2011 one of its highest honours: an Honorary Doctorate.