Founding father

Harry Basil Hinds devoted his entire adult life to the defence of Guyana. If ever there was someone whose life was totally saturated with issues of national defence, it was he. Harry Hinds dreamt, believed, thought, read, wrote, spoke, breathed and lived defence.

Harry Hinds was one of the founding fathers of the Guyana Defence Force (GDF). He joined the Queen's College Cadet Corps (QCCC) at age 15 years and, along with a squad of QC students including Carl Morgan, Azad Ishoof, Joseph Singh, Desmond Roberts, Oscar Pollard, David Granger, Keith Dyer, Ramesh Narine, Fairbairn Liverpool and Haydock West, most of whom made the short trek from Camp Road to Camp Ayanganna in the months before Guyana's independence. Harry entered the GDF where he helped to mould the mores and set the standards of the military profession in this country.

Born on October 7, 1946, Harry Hinds was the youngest of the old batch of pre-independence officers, and the oldest of the young batch which followed. He came up to Mons Officer Cadet School (MOCS) in the UK in March 1966 to join Joseph Singh and David Granger who were already there. This was the start of an illustrious military career.

Training and organisation

Harry Hinds won the appointment of Under Officer (UO) in Salerno Company at MOCS which, in British armyspeak, meant that he was the best 'overseas gentleman.' That was only the first of many firsts.

He was the first GDF officer to attend the Mortar Officers' course at the School of Infantry, UK (1967). It was he who established the GDF's mortar platoon which played such a crucial role in 'Operation Climax,' launched on August 19, 1969, to preserve the territorial integrity of this country, a role which was little recognized, less remembered and never rewarded.

He was also the first GDF officer to attend the Support Company Commanders' Course at Netheravon, UK (1970) and, as a result of this qualification, was able to lay the foundation for support weapons' organisation and training in the GDF.

He was to be the first GDF officer to qualify as a parachutist at Abingdon, UK (1968) although, with his characteristic diffidence, he stopped wearing his 'wings' when he felt he was no longer qualified to do so because he had stopped jumping.

Harry Hinds was only the second GDF officer to attend the Junior Command and Staff Course at Warminster, UK (1971). As a result of this qualification, he was able to join the Training Corps to conduct the first formal junior and senior staff courses. These courses paved the way for the establishment of the GDF staff school which, for decades afterwards, was to attract officers from Antigua, Belize and elsewhere in the Caribbean.

He was later to attend the Army Staff Course at Camberly, UK (1984) and the Civil- Military Strategy for Internal Development Course in Florida, USA (1995).

Commanding Officer

Harry Hinds was the founder, and first Commanding Officer, of the GDF Coast Guard. Although trained as a ground forces officer, he became involved in the administration of the small Marine Wing while serving as the Adjutant of the 1st Infantry Battalion in Camp Ayanganna where the Force's few sailors then lived.

From 1974, Harry Hinds undertook the Herculean task of trying to establish a maritime base not from scratch, but from rubble. Reconstructing the old BG Airways amphibious aircraft ramp at Ruimveldt, while the national economy had started its slide, proved the mettle of the man. Another officer who would have attempted to build a functional maritime facility with such slender resources is yet to be born!

The story of how he transformed the Marine Wing into a Coast Guard is one of vision, endurance and doggedness and is yet to be told.

In the heyday of the Coast Guard, daily newspapers never tired of telling of the arrests and seizures of foreign unlicensed fishing vessels. These achievements were the result of careful planning and forceful execution under Harry Hinds's command.

Harry Hinds was also the first military commissioner of the Civil Defence Commission (CDC). He helped to design systems for the Commission and chaired the committee which was engaged in negotiating the World Bank loan for the Guyana El Nino Emergency Assistance Project.

Maritime security

Harry Hinds's great passion was for maritime information systems, analysis and enforcement. He was saddened by the smuggling, narco-trafficking, piracy, pollution and poaching taking place in Guyana's territorial waters and fishery and economic zones.

Almost single-handedly, and single-mindedly, he strove to make his land-based GDF colleagues and the Government aware of the sea-based challenges to national security. On shoe-string budgets, he tried to set up a network of radar stations and maritime bases to protect this country's most valuable resources on its most vulnerable frontier, the Atlantic coast.

It was last year that he and I agreed to establish an enterprise entitled the 'Institute of Strategic and International Studies' (ISIS) which would consolidate the enormous research in maritime affairs in which he was continuously engaged with my own strategic studies.

Last year, alone, he wrote and published three articles on maritime security in the Guyana Review, all attributed to ISIS: The Coast Guard's Challenge, in June; Fishing in Troubled Waters, in August; and, Food, Fuel and Force in September, 2002. These articles amply testify to the breadth of the man's thinking and the depth of his concern for national security.

Military visionary

Despite his glowing career and glittering achievements, Harry Hinds's work was never appreciated fully by most of the people whose support and decisions mattered. Guyana and the GDF were always too poor to provide him with sufficient resources to realize his dreams.

But, were it not for Harry Hinds's dreams, diligence and determination, Guyana might have been poorer and weaker. His military training and experience; his personal reading and research; his analysis of the threats and challenges confronting the country, and his passionate nationalism combined to make him something of a military visionary and luminary.

He had a vision of a Guyana which was strong, secure and capable of defeating aggression and safeguarding its resources. Every training course he attended led to a changing of the course of the GDF's development in some particular way towards this end. He embraced new equipment, new technology, new methods and new training with zeal, realizing that Guyana had no choice but to modernize if its territory and resources were to be protected.

Harry Hinds's mind was restless, roving, ever researching problems, asking questions and seeking solutions. There was no area of national defence in which he was not interested.

In our largest military manoeuvres several years ago, he designed and supervised a firepower display combining artillery, mortars, anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons, rockets and small arms, after which the military representative of a friendly country expressed his admiration and congratulations on the precision and professionalism of the presentation.

The Force had no special way of recognising these special qualities and extra exertions. Like other senior officers, he was awarded the Military Service Medal (MSM), Efficiency Medal, Border Defence Medal, Independence Medal and Commemoration Medal. Military worth, though, is not measured in metres of medal-ribbon; it is, rather, a measure of ideas and it is for ideas, not awards, that he will be remembered.