Identity
Person No.
33503
Service No.
71387286KT
Last Name
First Name
John Henry
Initials
J H
Date of Birth
Unknown
Est. Birth Year
Age at Death
23
Death Record
Date of Death
Cause code
Unknown
Cause of Death
Died of heat exhaustion, during route march, at Phalaborwa
Military Service
Branch
Army
Rank
Rifleman
Regiment
Unit
Secondary Unit
United Nations/African Union Mission in Darfur
Defence Force
SADF 3,852
South African Defence Force
Location
Country
Locality
Grave Reference
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
Son of Mr. and Mrs. H. van Druten
Research notes
MERGE 25 Aug 2026: PersonNumber 48733 ("Van Drutten") deleted as a duplicate of this record -- identical ServiceNo (71387286KT) and DateDeath (1979-03-21), 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
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Dedications
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