Erasmus , Willem Abraham (W A)

Col (rt) Graham du Toit Last Post 22 Jun 2025: Pioneer Willem Abraham Erasmus, Army Service Corps, died of kidney cancer in 1 Military Hospital, age 54. Graham gave no service number. Rank was Soldier — corrected to Pioneer. ROH unit is AFB Waterkloof; hospital is Voortrekkerhoogte Military Hospital (same precinct as 1 Mil).
4 Sep 2026: Regiment leftover "South African Army" cleared -- that's the service branch (Army, as distinct from Navy/Air Force), not a specific regiment; the actual unit ("AFB Waterkloof") is already captured in Unit. Per John's decision, the 52 records with no better Unit info were left as-is.
16 Sep 2026, ServiceNo contamination sweep: the stored ServiceNo 'P/15347' was CLEARED. It was not a reading of this man's record. PersonNumbers 41568 to 41575 -- 7 consecutive records -- all carried the identical number, which belongs to the record at the head of that run (41568, Janse Van Rensburg, Karel Wilhelm (K W)). 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.