Identity
Person No.
33601
Old ROH no.
2050
Service No.
77301497PF
Last Name
First Name
Marthinus Johannes
Initials
M J
Date of Birth
Unknown
Est. Birth Year
Age at Death
19
Death Record
Date of Death
Cause code
DOW 2,734
Died of wounds
Cause of Death
Died of wounds, received from mortar rounds when night TB ambushed, in Southern Angola
Military Service
Branch
Army
Rank
Corporal
Unit
Unknown
Secondary Unit
54 Battalion
Defence Force
SADF 3,838
South African Defence Force
Location
Country
Locality
Cemetery
Grave Reference
Coordinates
Unit History
Awards
South Africa
Pro Patria Medal warrant, Government Gazette No. 5171 (25 Jun 1976), Rule 5, as amended by GG No. 5575 (3 Jun 1977); discontinued by GG No. 25213 (25 Jul 2003, Schedule corrected by GG No. 26778, 17 Sep 2004) for service on/after 27 Apr 2003. Gazette extracts: https://rohsa.co.za/award.php?id=24
Notes
Son of Mr. G. A. van Staden, of Fort Beaufort
Research notes
14 Sep 2026: Pro Patria Medal added -- database-wide sweep for SADF Border War operational-area deaths within the medal's gazetted window (25 Jun 1976 - 27 Apr 2003), per the warrant's died-before-qualifying-period provision. See PersonAward.Citation for the gazette references.
Citations
Unknown
External References
-
Col (rt) Graham du Toit Last Post
Col (rt) Graham du Toit Last Post 12 Aug 2026: 6 SAI TB under mortar fire, Southern Angola near the Cut-line.
- South African War Graves Project open source ↗
-
The War in Angola
open source ↗
War In Angola Roll of Honour (warinangola.com, tabid=1175), pages 42-45 of 143: confirmed, no changes.
Stories 2
He was the platoon seargant for platoon 6 Foxtrot Co 6SAI. Killed during late night ambush during Ops Carnation. The contact lasted about 2 hours and is said to have involved Cubans and Easr Germans.
We did a small ops Carnation I think it was, and about 140 of us walked into Angola from Eenhana to rev a Terr base, we had a Cmdt with us from Eenhana don't recall his name though. We where going to do a First Light attack on the base and the night before the attack just before the company was due to go down for the night a group of Terr's walked between our Rekkies and the box formation, we could not catch them and so we back tracked a few kay's and went down for the night. The moon was quite bright that night and just after it went down at about 1.00am we were heavily Mortered by the Terr's, most of the HQ guys in the centre of the TB had not dug in and Cpl Van Staden was amongst them, unfortunatly an 81mm went off right in front of him and he picked up a really bad head injury I was the closest Medic to him and myself and a guy Gavin tried to keep him alive untill morning when we could get comms and a Puma in to casevac the injured. Sadly after a few hours of CPR etc. he passed away. We lost a few others and had quite a few injuries, one was an RFN Blom if I remember correctly and someone from 701 BTN. When we looked in the morning it looked as though there were about 50 Terr's that had sneaked in and set themselves up, there were signs that some had been injured when we returned fire but no bodies left behind. Attack was called off and we walked back to Eenhana. If I remember correctly it had taken us about 4 days to walk into the area where the Terr base was. I was with Platoon 3 with LT James Hay. We were usually based at Elundu doing patrols in the area. We Will Remember Them.
Dedications
No dedications have been added yet.