French , Robert Bale (R B)

16 Sep 2026, ServiceNo contamination sweep: the stored ServiceNo '478966' was CLEARED. It was not a reading of this man's record. PersonNumbers 30437 to 30438 -- 2 consecutive records -- all carried the identical number, which belongs to the record at the head of that run (30437, French, Philip Arthur (P A)). A value repeated down an unbroken block of PersonNumbers is a forward-fill import artefact, not men who shared a service number; the pattern holds across 850 such runs on this roll and is independently confirmed by Mike Sandham's research log, which attaches such numbers to the head of the run 167 times against 6 contradictions (all examined). No replacement is guessed: this man's real service number is simply not known, and a blank field says so honestly where another man's number did not.