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Heeley , Walter Harden (W H)

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Identity
Person No.
30668
Service No.
Unknown
Last Name
First Name
Walter Harden
Initials
W H
Date of Birth
Unknown
Est. Birth Year
Age at Death
53
Death Record
Date of Death
Cause code
KIA 14,779
Killed in action
Cause of Death
Killed in action, at Ellis Park, during Rand Revolt
Military Service
Branch
Army
Rank
Lieutenant
Defence Force
UDF 24,809
Union Defence Force
Unit History
Role at time of death
Mounted Rifles, later Armoured Car
Status
Active Citizen Force (Reserve)
Formed 21 September 1899 as the Imperial Light Horse (Second Boer War). Volunteer unit in the Transvaal Volunteers 1902-1913, then transferred to the Active Citizen Force as "5th Mounted Rifles (Imperial Light Horse)" in 1913. Reformed as an armoured regiment 1949; split into 1 LHR/2 LHR 1975 (Border War era), reamalgamated 1997. Renamed Johannesburg Light Horse Regiment 2019.
Notes

Son of Fred and Sarah Heeley. Born Estcourt, Natal. He died leaving a son and daughter who were both under 5 years of age

Research notes


16 Sep 2026, ServiceNo contamination sweep: the stored ServiceNo 'P057659Y' was CLEARED. It was not a reading of this man's record. PersonNumbers 30667 to 30668 -- 2 consecutive records -- all carried the identical number, which belongs to the record at the head of that run (30667, Hedenskog, Sholto Brough (S B)). 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.
25 Sep 2026, Unit2 service-branch sweep: the stored Secondary Unit "Army" was CLEARED as a duplicate. It was not a sub-unit, it was a service-branch word repeating what the Branch column already says. Secondary Unit is for sub-units -- a company, a squadron, a commando -- and this record's branch of service is unchanged at "Army".

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