Identity
Person No.
33448
Old ROH no.
1549
Service No.
65436966KV
Last Name
First Name
Desmond Reginald
Initials
D R
Date of Birth
Unknown
Est. Birth Year
Age at Death
38
Death Record
Date of Death
Cause code
MVA 2,637
Motor vehicle accident
Cause of Death
Died in Pedestrian Accident, killed when run over by a civilian vehicle that failed to stop at a military roadblock near Upington
Military Service
Location
Country
Locality
Cemetery
Grave Reference
Unit History
Home Unit
Attached To
Role at time of death
Infantry (area defence)
Status
Commando (Area Bound Reserve)
Part of
SADF Commando System
category
Part of
Generic Regiment-field text used across hundreds of records whose actual unit is a specific local Commando (e.g. Rustenburg Commando, Boksburg Commando -- captured in Unit). Post-WWII, "Commando" is its own force-component category alongside Regular/Permanent Force and Active Citizen Force -- area-bound, part-time reserve units tied to a specific district, mobilised for local counter-insurgency/area protection duties during the Border War era. Not a single regiment; this Status applies to the whole category.
Notes
Son of Mrs. R. van der Merwe
Research notes
Col (rt) Graham du Toit Last Post 08 Dec 2017: 65436966KV Rifleman Desmond Reginald van der Merwe, Gordonia Commando, Two Gordonia Commando members killed when a civilian vehicle failed to stop at a military roadblock near Upington. Same incident as Burger and van der Merwe. He was 38. MERGE 25 Aug 2026: PersonNumber 48780 ("Van der Merwe") deleted as a duplicate of this record -- identical ServiceNo (65436966KV) and DateDeath (1987-12-08), surname a spelling/OCR/case variant, confirmed via the pantser.cmvo.org.za SADF deaths PDF cross-check. Same class of error as the Sekonjela/Sekonyela merge earlier the same day.
Citations
Unknown
External References
-
Col (rt) Graham du Toit Last Post
Col (rt) Graham du Toit Last Post 08 Dec 2017: 65436966KV Rifleman Desmond Reginald van der Merwe, Gordonia Commando, Two Gordonia Commando members killed when a civilian vehicle failed to stop at a military roadblock near Upington. Same incident as Burger and van der Merwe. He was 38.
- South African War Graves Project open source ↗
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