After the war, he was appointed as medical director of the U.S. Veterans Administration and chief executive officer of Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

After graduating the school, he was assigned duty as a recruiting officer at Fort Thomas, Kentucky, where he served until March 1918.

At that time he was assigned as the Adjutant of the 309th Sanitary Train, a part of the 84th Division at Camp Zachary Taylor, Kentucky.

Ordered to Razac, Dordogne, France, he took over a poorly functioning camp hospital to which half of the 84th Division's soldiers were being sent when they fell ill.

[3] In November 1918, Hawley was transferred from the 84th Division to the Intermediate Base Section, American Expeditionary Forces in Nevers, France, where he served as assistant surgeon.

Working through his problems through physical reconditioning, Halsey avoided a disability retirement—and then proceeded to fracture a vertebra in his neck playing polo in 1921.

[2] Hawley returned from France in June 1919, and was assigned as the post surgeon, Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana.

In September, he reported to Johns Hopkins University, where he spent the next nine months studying biostatistics[7] and receiving a Doctorate in Public Health[8] before again returning to Camp Custer, continuing to serve as the camp sanitary inspector until September 1923, when he moved to Chicago, Illinois to serve as the medical inspector for the VI Corps Area.

Moseley said, in part, that "In a region formerly noted for the number of its flies and mosquitos, he has made a great record in keeping this Camp free from both those pests.

While there, he had the additional duty of serving on the Advisory Committee on Malaria Control, which reported to the Governor of the Philippines, now-retired Major General Leonard Wood.

After having fought against malarial bearing mosquitos and a virtual endemic of syphilis in the local population, Hawley was put to work during the March 1931 Nicaragua earthquake, where he and his medical detachment set up a treatment area and provided care for all who presented themselves, performing 10 major and 20 minor surgical procedures.

As the executive officer, he also had teaching responsibilities at the Army Medical School, where he served as an instructor in biostatistics and epidemiology.

In August 1934 he left the Army Medical center for Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he attended the two-year course of the Command and General Staff School, graduating in June, 1936.

[10] Although his regiment was at essentially cadre strength, Hawley and his men participated in some particularly notable events during his tenure in command.

In September 1938, Hawley left command, and the Medical Field Service School, to attend the Army War College at Washington Barracks, Washington, D.C., graduating with a "superior" score as a member of the Class of 1939, among whose other members were Leslie Groves (who, like Hawley, had served on the Nicaragua Canal Survey) and Hoyt Vandenberg.

[13] After graduation, Hawley returned to the Medical Field Service School, reporting to Carlisle Barracks in August 1939.

At the time of his arrival, the Medical Field Service School was involved in a four-year program of revising all of their corresponding studies material, which was often the only formal training available to officers of the National Guard and Army Reserve.

[13] His program discontinued, Hawley was ordered to Fort Lee, Virginia, to serve as commanding officer of the Medical Department Replacement Training Center being established there.

Designed to house and train seven battalions of medical trainees—each with a planned strength of 1,000 soldiers—the center received its first students in mid-March.

Hawley spent the time between activation and the first student arrivals to organize the center and procure supplies and equipment.

[15] Two months after the first trainees reported, in May 1941, Hawley returned to Carlisle Barracks to serve as Assistant Commandant of the Medical Field Service School, a position he would hold until September, when he was ordered to England to serve on the Special Army Observers Group, commanded by Major General James E. Chaney.

As he told the story in a 1962 oral history interview for the Army Medical Department Historical Unit, the morning after Pearl Harbor - I hadn’t had my radio on that night...

[16] Hawley believed he had been offered those positions because key staff members in those organizations had served with him on the Nicaragua Canal Survey ten years earlier.

"[2] Although Hawley's stay at the VA was brief—less than two years, as he departed in December 1947, when the appointment of Bradley as Army Chief of Staff was announced—he is credited with two major accomplishments during his tenure.

He has evicted politicians who wanted medical patronage for their districts, people who demanded that the graduates of the two first-class Negro medical colleges be excluded from practicing in veterans' hospitals, and representatives of John Stelle, National Commander of the American Legion, who wanted to admit en masse to V.A.

[25] A portion of the report, detailing 71 recommendations focused primarily on the use of military hospitals, was released by the Secretary of Defense on January 12, 1949.

[32] Hawley died at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center on November 24, 1965, following a several years long fight with cancer.

[36][37] The hospital was demolished in 2006 to make room for a new Post Exchange/Commissary complex, replacing facilities that had remained open after the BRAC closure of the fort.

In addition, the white star formed of six wavy points, called an "estoile" in heraldry, is taken from the coat of arms of Benjamin Harrison for whom the Fort is named.

The distinctive unit insignia was originally approved for the US Army Hospital, Fort Benjamin Harrison on 9 July 1970.