Soon after the outbreak of World War II, Coughlin returned to Canada to serve in the Canadian Army with the 4th Princess Louise Dragoon Guards – also known as the "Plugs" or the "Piddly-Gees".
"[1][2] Like America's Bill Mauldin, whose military cartoons in the Stars and Stripes made him the unofficial voice of the ordinary "dogface", Bing Coughlin became the spokesman for the Canadian enlisted man.
In 1946, the Governor General of Canada made Bing Coughlin a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for his cartooning during the war.
A year after the war, a new collection of "Bing" Coughlin's wartime cartoons was published by Thomas Nelson and Sons, Canada.
Mauldin continued a successful career as a newspaper political cartoonist after the war, while Coughlin returned to commercial art.