[1] Coward was commissioned into the Royal Air Force as an acting pilot officer (on probation) on 28 January 1937.
19 Squadron based at RAF Duxford as a pilot flying the Gloster Gauntlet, a single seat biplane.
[3] Having shown his artistic skill through caricatures of his comrades, he was tasked with painting the squadron badge on the canvas of the biplanes.
[1] During the Battle of Britain, on 31 August 1940, his squadron was scrambled from RAF Fowlmere to intercept a group of German Dornier Do 215s.
During the now-slower descent he used the radio lead attached to his helmet to tie a tourniquet around his thigh and stem the bleeding.
[7] Having taken five months to recover from the surgery,[1] Coward joined the personal staff of Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
[6] His main duty at Chequers, the prime minister's country residence, was to judge if reports were urgent enough to warrant waking Churchill during the night.
[8] At Chartwell, Churchill's private home, he coordinated the air surveillance to warn the prime minister of any impending attack from nearby Nazi occupied France.
[10] Shortly after, he left Churchill's staff to become an instructor at the fighter training unit,[1] based in RAF Aston Down.