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17 Sep 1909, Colac Bay, Southland, N.Z.

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28 Jun, 1997, 

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2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force 
       (Middle East, Greece, 

 

1939

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1945

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20th Battalion

 

28-29 Apr 1941, Kalamai, Greece

 

Sergeant

 

Sergeant

 

Mention in Despatches (MiD)
POW 1941-45

MINI BIO

 

Known as Jack or J.D., was educated at local schools and on most days, before starting lessons, would milk a herd of 40 cows. He was always tough. He had to be. He had left home at the age of 12 and survived for a time on his earnings as a galley hand on board an Antarctic whaling ship.
He later became an errand boy and swagman during the Great Depression. Although his early life was one of extreme hardship, it was also full of adventure. By the time war broke out he was a foreman with the Public Works on the West Coast of the South Island.
In 1937, he invested his earnings into a pub with his future wife, Eunice Henriksen, 
He was a shy and modest man who shunned the limelight, maintaining that it was his wartime mates who should receive the accolades. Gentle, dignified, and intelligent, he commanded respect wherever he went. There was an air of humility about him, a sense of honesty and forthrightness, which disarmed people and endeared him to them.

He is referred to in military history as "the defiant hero - a good man,  who like so many of his generation, was not prepared
to sit idly by when faced with evil".
One of the first to enlist when WW2 broke out. He joined the 20th Battalion, and was posted to Egypt and Greece.  After intense and deadly fighting at Kalamata, he was captured and became a POW for four and a half years.
As Sir Geoffrey Cox, who himself fought in Greece, said: "Jack Hinton was a product of the times in which he lived, the New Zealand of the 1920s and 1930s, which shaped him, and which produced the soldier, who, given only one chance to fight, did so with consummate daring."
When he returned to NZ he became a publican, managing hotels throughout New Zealand. 
He retired in Christchurch in 1980..

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LONDON GAZETTE

No. 35311

14 October 1941

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On the night of 28th–29th April, 1941, during the fighting in Greece, a column of German armoured forces entered Kalamata; this column, which contained several armoured cars, 2" guns, and 3" mortars, and two 6" guns, rapidly converged on a large force of British and New Zealand troops awaiting embarkation on the beach. When the order to retreat to cover was given, Serjeant Hinton, shouting "to Hell with this, who'll come with me," ran to within several yards of the nearest gun; the gun fired, missing him, and he hurled two grenades which completely wiped out the crew. He then came on with the bayonet followed by a crowd of New Zealanders. German troops abandoned the first 6" gun and retreated into two houses. Serjeant Hinton smashed the window and then the door of the first house and dealt with the garrison with the bayonet. He repeated the performance in the second house and as a result, until overwhelming German forces arrived, the New Zealanders held the guns. Serjeant Hinton then fell with a bullet wound through the lower abdomen and was taken prisoner.