← Back to the front page

40 Insights into the Lives of Famous War Veterans

Khalid Elhassan July 13, 2019 26 min

30. Kirk Douglas was seriously injured in WWII

Kirk Douglas, in WWII and after. Pintrest

Kirk Douglas attended the US Navy’s midshipman school in Notre Dame, and upon graduation, he was commissioned an ensign. He was sent to the Pacific Theater, where he served as a communications officer aboard USS PC-1137, a submarine chaser. He spent most of 1942 and 1943 hunting Japanese submarines, and while doing that, Douglas suffered severe internal injuries when a depth charge exploded prematurely. He spent months in a hospital, before he was medically discharged in 1944.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.