 Thomas Moulton , Hubbard 's executive officer on the USS PC @-@ 815 , testified in 1984 that Hubbard had said that he had been shot in the Dutch East Indies , and that on another occasion Hubbard had told him that his eyes had been damaged by the flash of a large @-@ caliber gun . Hubbard himself told Scientologists in a taped lecture that he had suffered eye injuries after having had " a bomb go off in my face . " He told Robert Heinlein , the science fiction writer , that " both of his feet had been broken ( drumhead @-@ type injury ) when his last ship was bombed . " According to Heinlein , Hubbard said that he " had had a busy war – sunk four times and wounded again and again " . Hubbard was said to have been " twice been pronounced dead " and to have spent a year in a naval hospital which he " utilized in the study of endocrine substances and protein " . The techniques that he developed " made possible not only his own recovery from injury , but helped other servicemen to regain their health " . On another occasion , Hubbard said that he had been hospitalized because " I was utterly exhausted . I 'd just been in combat theater after combat theater , you see , with no rest , no nothing between . " 
