HINDS-KENNETH

Source:  “Military Officer” magazine published by Military Officers Association of America, October 2017:

PROPHETIC  WORDS

Although I served 23 years in the Navy, retiring as a Commander, this story concerns my father, LCDR Kenneth Hinds, USN.  My father joined the Navy pretty late in life, in 1941, when he was 40 years old.  He went through the V-12 Navy College Training Program and was commissioned as a Lieutenant.  Because of his age – and perhaps because he had three kids (me included) – my father was assigned to ADM Ernest King’s staff, in Washington, D.C.  He did not like it there, so he petitioned to be reassigned to sea duty.  In order to be reassigned, he had to face a face-to-face interview with ADM King, who all historians will tell you was a very feisty person.  ADM King responded to my father’s request for reassignment in character: “So, you want to get your ass shot off,” he said.  “OK, I will oblige you.”

My father was reassigned to patrol craft school in Florida.  He subsequently ended up in command of PC-1226.  After the Battle of Anzio, where the PC-1226 was credited with shooting down a Luftwaffe bomber but also was damaged pretty badly, the patrol craft was transferred to the Free French Navy, where it lasted for many years as the Legionnaire.  My father was transferred to a newly constructed amphibious ship on the West Coast.  On this ship, he participated in both the Battle of Iwo Jima and the Battle of Okinawa.

It was during the Battle of Iwo Jima that ADM King’s prophecy was fulfilled.  My father was on deck, supervising the offloading of some combat vehicles into landing craft, when a Japanese kamikaze dived for his ship.  The plane missed, but a piece of shrapnel hit my father in a most inglorious location, just as – and where! – ADM King had predicted.  My father was offered a choice and elected to have the ship’s doctor patch him up so that he could stay aboard the ship until after its participation in the Battle of Okinawa.  After that, he had three major surgeries.  The Navy said he was 100-percent disabled and would never be able to walk again.  He disagreed, and after his third surgery, he got up from his wheelchair at the door of St. Albans Naval Hospital, Long Island, NY., and walked away. He lived to be 93, still walking.

          /s/ Douglas J. Hinds, CDR, USN (Ret)