Private First Class William M. Hawkins

Creator

Preview

Identifier

20037138

Description

"Twenty-Year-Old Marine Veteran is Visiting Home. Although only 20 years old, Pfc. William M. Hawkins, son of Mr. and Mrs. O. S. Hawkins of Fort Worth, is a veteran of over two years service with the famed Second Division of Marines in the Southwest Pacific and wears two stars on his Presidential Unit Citation ribbon for action at Guadalcanal and Tarawa. He is home on furlough. The young Marine, at the age of 17, left his studies at Polytechnic High School to enlist in the Marine Corps with his parents' permission. He doesn't say much about the action he has seen but admits that the Battle of Tarawa was 'pretty bloody.' Hawkins landed in the second wave of marines on that hotly contested beachhead. Earlier he saw action at Gavutu, Tulagi and Guadalcanal. Perhaps his narrowest escape came not during beachhead fighting but when he was on a tug boat which, while going from Tulagi to Guadalcanal, was hit by a shell from a Japanese destroyer and sunk. Hawkins was in the water two and a half hours swimming part of the time without the aid of a lifebelt before he was picked up. Hawkins also wears three stars for major engagements on his Pacific Theater ribbon for the offense and defense of Guadalcanal and Tarawa. At the end of his 30-day furlough he will report to Cherry Point, N. C." Published Star-Telegram Morn. Aug. 11, 1944. Private First Class William M. Hawkins is standing against the Star-Telegram photo wall wearing his military uniform. The shirt is a medium color with matching tie and a pin at his collar, and he is wearing service ribbons above his breast pocket.

Archival Date

1944-08-10

Collection Name

Fort Worth Star-Telegram Collection

Collection Number

AR406-6-620

Original Format

Negatives, Black & White

File Format

JPG

Rights

Rights held by The University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, Special Collections. Any use of content downloaded or printed from this page is limited to non-commercial personal or educational use, including fair use as directed by U.S. copyright laws. For more information or for reproduction requests, please contact UTA Special Collections by emailing spcoref@uta.edu.

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Subjects

Hawkins, William M. (Pfc.); Hawkins, O. S.; Marines (Military personnel); Military uniforms; Second Division Marines; Presidential Unit Citation; Pacific Theater ribbon