2/5th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment
The 1911 Census records that Percival (Percy) St Clair Hawkins was living in Cheltenham at 27 Granville Street with his parents, Frank Albert and Caroline Comfort Hawkins and some of his siblings. Up to that point the couple had produced eight children, of whom six had survived.
Percy had been born in Cheltenham in early 1895 and by 1911 he had joined his father as an undertaker, after leaving Cheltenham Parish School.
Percy enlisted in the Gloucestershire Regiment on 16 September 1914 and was then posted to the 2/5th Battalion. He served in England until 23 May 1916, following which he was in France with the British Expeditionary Force. He returned home, probably due to sickness, on 30 June 1916 and was discharged from the Army as ‘being no longer fit for War Service’ on 7 August 1916. He was given a Silver War Badge.
He died on 9 October 1917, at his parent’s home, a result of illness contracted whilst on active service. He was aged 22.
He was buried in a family plot in Cheltenham Cemetery, where he joined his father Frank Albert Hawkins who had died on 24 November 1916; his mother joined them on 16 December 1940. He is commemorated on the Cheltenham Town War Memorial and that at St Mary’s Church, Cheltenham.
There is a photo of him (above) with two brothers also serving, in The Graphic of 1 January 1916: he is on the left.
Researched by Graham Adams 24 January 2013 with acknowledgement that some information was partly drawn from ‘Leaving all that was dear – Cheltenham in the Great War’ by Joe Devereux and Graham Sacker)