Arthur Hawkins

Major Hawkins presenting trophies with his wife in Poona, India, 1934.

Medals are shown left to right, as per the bullet point list above.

Born at Putney in 1897, Arthur William Hawkins joined the Yorkshire Regiment as a 2nd Lieutenant in May 1915, serving in France with the 2nd Battalion from October to December 1915. He joined with four other officers and 204 other ranks to replace the casualties suffered at the Battle of Loos.

Hawkins joined the Royal Flying Corps in April 1917 and with it served in Egypt and Mesopotamia 1917-18 and in North Persia with the Bushire Field Force in 1919. According to a fellow officer, Hawkins had a Tibetan terrier which he had acquired whilst serving in Mesopotamia which he always took with him when flying.

Hawkins was promoted to Major in 1933. Between 1938 and 1939 he was present with the 2nd Battalion in the Waziristan campaign and continued to serve in it in the Second World War. He was appointed Lieutenant-Colonel in 1940 and commanded the batallion in Ramzak, India until 1943. During this time, he met Lieutenant-Colonel Stansfeld who recalled that Hawkins had a sense of fun: at the end of Stansfeld’s first month in the battalion, Hawkins summoned him and said he had the largest wine bill in the Mess. As a punishment he made Stansfeld Wines member for the Mess, an appointment he held for the next four years.

Lieutenant-Colonel Hawkins retired from the army in May 1948. He died in July 1976.