Magpie Miscellany Part 6

In memory of Flight Lieutenant Garth Hawkins

The first handful of episodes of my new Magpies Miscellany series summarised the research I conducted earlier this year for the first Football and War seminar held in Stripes in June. This wholly focused on links between the club and World War 1 but I also stumbled across the story of Garth Hawkins, a former player who died in the Falklands Conflict in 1982. 

The fortieth anniversary of his death prompted former reserve team manager John Henesy to write to the Maidenhead Advertiser to commemorate his teammate so it seems appropriate to provide a coda to my Football and War series with a tribute to Hawkins.

Garth was born in Maidenhead in 1942 but grew up in Binfield attending Ranelagh School in Bracknell. He played for the Moles whilst still at school and joined the RAF aged 22. Following a spell in the Far East he returned to the Thames Valley in 1969, stationed at Abingdon. He joined the Magpies and was selected for the Reserves impressing in a match at Slough where the Maidenhead Advertiser described him as a 6ft 3 goalkeeper who “handled competently” and saved a penalty. After two appearances for the Reserves, he was given his senior debut in March 1969 at St. Albans City in a Wycombe Floodlit Cup replay. He went on to make two more first team appearances that season: a Premier Midweek Floodlit league match against Crawley Town at York Road, and an Athenian League match at Wembley FC. 

Reserve team player manager John Henesy described Hawkins as: “an excellent goalkeeper”, whose “opportunities for first team football were blocked by the excellent Peter Spittle”. He “excelled at saving penalties and saved more than he conceded”. Above all he was “an outstanding team man” and “a tower of strength in his support [for Henesy]”.

Hawkins also played for Oxford City and was a local cricketer of some renown. A fast bowler he played for Binfield and Littlewick Green.

Known as ‘Gunner’ he started to work with the SAS in 1979 and was still attached to them three years later when the British taskforce headed south to recover the Falkland Islands. On May 19th 1982, he was onboard a Sea King helicopter transferring troops from HMS Hermes to HMS Intrepid, when it lost power after a freak collision with an albatross. This caused it to plunge into the icy waters of the South Atlantic leading to twenty of those on board losing their lives, including Hawkins.

He is commemorated on the Binfield War Memorial, the SAS memorial at St Martin’s church in Hereford, and all the Falklands Memorials.

You can read more about his untimely demise in Sea King Down, a book published last year about the fatal crash, written by survivor Mark Aston.

Sources:

One for Sorrow, Two for Joy, Mark Smith, 2011

Maidenhead Advertiser

https://www.memorialatpeninsula.org/?p=15225

https://sama82.org.uk/hawkinsgw/

https://www.getreading.co.uk/news/local-news/village-honours-pilot-killed-falklands-4200589

https://www.roll-of-honour.com/cgi-bin/falklands.cgi

https://falklands35blog.wordpress.com/2021/01/12/falklands-35garth-walter-hawkins/

https://www.raf.mod.uk/news/articles/raf-remembers-flight-lieutenant-garth-hawkin