Van Der Merwe (G J)

7 Sep 2026: FirstName "Frederick Johannes" was a forward-fill copy from PN 33451 (genuine there, DateDeath 1980-05-19) -- this record's own DateDeath (1984-03-02) and stored Initials (G J) don't match 33451 at all. The Battle Group Alpha/31 & 201 Bn Commemorative Needle plaque independently gives "2Lt G J Van der Merwe", confirming the Initials and contradicting the FirstName. Cleared.
7 Sep 2026: CauseDeath was a forward-fill copy from PN 33451 (Van Der Merwe, Frederick Johannes), an unrelated record -- cleared as contamination, not a real cause. Found while linking this record to the Battle Group Alpha/31 & 201 Bn Commemorative Needle memorial; the same bug affects ~6,835 CauseDeath fields database-wide (see data/causedeath-contamination-scan-2026-09-07.md), not yet fixed beyond this batch.

10 Sep 2026: Unit set to 201 Battalion per Mike Sandham naming rule (DoD in 1 Aug 1980-pre 1 Jun 1989). Ambiguous Regiment '31 or 201 Battalion' cleared. Needle memorial.
16 Sep 2026, ServiceNo contamination sweep: the stored ServiceNo '77255719' was CLEARED. It was not a reading of this man's record. PersonNumbers 33451 to 33452 -- 2 consecutive records -- all carried the identical number, which belongs to the record at the head of that run (33451, Van Der Merwe, Frederick Johannes (F J)). 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".