In early May 1944 Hawkesworth spent a month in temporary command of the British 1st Infantry Division in the Anzio beachhead when its GOC, Major General Ronald Penney, fell ill. Hawkesworth returned to the 46th Division in early June. By July the 46th was back in Italy, now up to strength (largely from anti-aircraft gunners who had been retrained as infantrymen), as part of Lieutenant-General Sir Oliver Leese's British Eighth Army's V Corps, under Lieutenant-General Charles Keightley, on the Adriatic coast. The division was involved in heavy fighting during "Operation Olive", the Eighth Army's major assault on the Gothic Line defences in September and October.