John Daniel Hinton, VC (17 September 1909 – 28 June 1997) was a New Zealand soldier who served during the Second World War.

[3] Hinton spent most of the next several years on the West Coast working in railway construction, mining for gold, picking fruit,[3] hauling coal, and saw milling.

[3] In the 1930s, Hinton found regular employment in the Public Works Department, which was building bridges and roads throughout the West Coast.

[6] In March 1941, the 2nd New Zealand Division was one of several Allied units deployed to Greece to help prepare for an expected invasion by Italian and German troops.

It had been decided that the Allied forces would abandon Greece; at Kalamata, the reinforcement battalion, along with several thousand other, mainly Australian, troops, was awaiting evacuation.

On 28 April, the New Zealanders were waiting for transport when advance units of the German 5th Panzer Division began to attack the town with machine-gun fire and self-propelled 6-inch guns.

[8] Hearing gunfire in the distance, Hinton, wanting to assist in the defence of the Allied positions, went to the headquarters of Brigadier Leonard Parrington, the officer in command of the evacuation.

On being threatened with a court-martial for speaking to a senior officer in such a manner, he issued his own threat of proceedings against Parrington for defeatist talk and then left to determine for himself the situation.

Ignoring an order from a nearby officer to retreat, he rushed forward to the nearest enemy gun and, hurling two grenades, killed the crew.

He continued towards the town's waterfront, clearing out two light machine-gun nests and a mortar with grenades, then dealt with the garrison of a house where some of the enemy were sheltering.

[8] Officially listed as missing in action until August 1941, Hinton spent several weeks in a hospital near Athens until he was well enough to be transferred to a POW camp in Germany.

In the meantime, a recommendation for the Victoria Cross (VC) for Hinton was dispatched by Major George Thomson, a medical officer who had witnessed his actions in Kalamata.

[8] The citation read as follows: 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.

He was paraded before his fellow prisoners and presented with a VC ribbon by the camp's commandant before being returned to his cell to complete his punishment.

[12] In 1944, even though a prisoner of war, Hinton was contacted by the International Red Cross to pass on a request from the Labour Party.

He borrowed an American uniform and went forward to the frontline with the 44th Infantry Division and assisted in the capture of three villages and rounding up of German POWs.

He was initially based at the Thistle Hotel, a notorious drinking establishment in Auckland, for three years, during which he received a belated mention in despatches for his escape attempts while a POW.

[17] During his time as a hotelier, Hinton made several overseas trips, the first of which was to attend the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

[27] On 16 February 2008, New Zealand Police announced all the medals had been recovered as a result of a NZ$300,000 reward offered by Michael Ashcroft and Tom Sturgess.