Keith Coster

Who was Keith Coster?

Lieutenant General Keith Coster I.C.D., O.B.E was a South African army officer who rose to command the Rhodesian Army from 1968 to 1972.

Coster was born on 19 April 1920 in Eshowe, Kwa-Zulu-Natal, South AfricaHe was educated at Maritzburg College, in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. After his matriculation at the school in 1936, he enlisted in the Special Service Battalion of the Union Defence Force, and was commissioned into the SA Air Force on 6 September 1939. While flying a Curtis Tomahawk with 5 Squadron SAAF, he was shot down over North Africa by ME 109 in 1942 and was a prisoner-of-war until May 1945.

After the war, he transferred to the SA army, and during 1952 attended the Royal Army Staff College at Camberley in England.

In 1955, he left the SA Permanent Force to join the Army of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland as a major. On the dissolution of the federation, he joined the Rhodesian Army, in which he rose to the rank of lieutenant general and was appointed as general officer commanding.

He retired from that post in 1972 as a lieutenant-general, having commanded the Rhodesian Army from 1968 to 1972. In 1959, he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, received the Independence Declaration in 1965 and was awarded a Grand Officer of the Order of the Star of South Africa in 1981.