 As the psychologist and computer scientist Christopher Evans has noted , " One aspect of [ Hubbard 's ] war record that is particularly confused , and again typical of the mixture of glamour and obscurantism which surrounds Hubbard and his past , is the matter of wounds or injuries suffered on active service . " Hubbard asserted after the war that he had been " blinded with injured optic nerves , and lame with physical injuries to hip and back ... Yet I worked my way back to fitness and strength in less than two years , using only what I knew about Man and his relationship to the universe . " Accounts published by the Church of Scientology asserted that he had been " flown home in the late spring of 1942 in the secretary of the Navy 's private plane as the first U.S.-returned casualty from the Far East " . A 2006 publication goes further , describing him as " the first American casualty of South Pacific combat " . 
