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Van Der Merwe , Hendrik Franchois (H F)

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Photo of Van Der Merwe
Identity
Person No.
33454
Old ROH no.
1552
Service No.
74268624KT
Last Name
Van Der Merwe 128
First Name
Hendrik Franchois
Initials
H F
Date of Birth
Unknown
Est. Birth Year
1959 (±1 yr) 444
Age at Death
25
Death Record
Date of Death
02 March 1984 102
Cause code
DROW 1,204
Drowned
Cause of Death
Drowned 1,086
Drowned, the State President had to declare him dead
Military Service
Branch
Army
Rank
Rifleman
Regiment
South African Commandos 98
Corps
South African Infantry Corps 10,347
Unit
Vanderbi 1
Defence Force
SADF 3,852
South African Defence Force
Location
Country
South Africa 23,872
Locality
Gauteng 9,374
Cemetery
VANDERBIJLPARK CEMETERY 22
Grave Reference
D12 Memorial Stone - Body not recovered 1
Unit History
Role at time of death
Infantry (area defence)
Status
Commando (Area Bound Reserve)
Part of
SADF Commando System category
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

Husband of Mrs. A. I. van der Merwe

Research notes

MERGE 25 Aug 2026: PersonNumber 48772 ("Van der Merwe") deleted as a duplicate of this record -- identical ServiceNo (74268624KT) and DateDeath (1984-03-02), 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.
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".

Citations
Unknown
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