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Van Der Kolf

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No photograph available — remembrance poppy
Identity
Person No.
33415
Service No.
Unknown
Last Name
Van Der Kolf 1
First Name
Unknown
Initials
Unknown
Date of Birth
Unknown
Est. Birth Year
1951 (±1 yr) 253
Age at Death
29
Death Record
Date of Death
01 July 1980 190
Cause code
SUIC 388
Suicide
Cause of Death
Following an altercation about church parade attendance 1
Following an altercation about church parade attendance, he acquired ammunition and Committed Suicide by shooting himself with his R1 in the LWT area. He later died in the sickbay of the base
Military Service
Branch
Army
Rank
Rifleman
Regiment
South African Commandos 98
Corps
South African Infantry Corps 10,347
Unit
11 Commando, Jan Kemp Dorp, "E" Coy. 1
Defence Force
SADF 3,874
South African Defence Force
Location
Country
South Africa 23,879
Locality
Gauteng 9,374
Cemetery
SADF WALL OF REMEMBRANCE, VOORTREKKER MONUMENT, PRETORIA 1,926
Grave Reference
Alternative Commemoration until grave found 1,612
Memorial
Memorial
SADF Wall of Remembrance
Location
On a koppie at the Voortrekker Monument, overlooking Pretoria
Address
Voortrekker Monument, Eeufees Road, Groenkloof, Pretoria, 0181, South Africa
Coordinates
-25.77639, 28.17583 · OpenStreetMap
Panel
Not listed against a numbered panel
On the panel
Position on the panel will be added with photographs
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. C. L. van der Byl. ref. 85 years of SAAF.

Research notes

Cleared stolen ServiceNo 79254371BG (belongs to Van Der Bijl F.P.L. PN 33413, 101 Field Workshop, 1983-05-28).
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".
14 Oct 2026: FirstName "First Name Unknown" cleared -- a literal placeholder string, not a real name, treated as blank per John's instruction extending the Khaile (31046) fix. Initials cleared too, having been equally corrupted to the placeholder "F N U".
14 Oct 2026: SAWGP independently confirms this record carries no given name either (SAWGP's own "Given Name" field is also "First Name Unknown") -- the clearing above matches the primary source, not a loss of real data.
14 Oct 2026: SAWGP's Unit "11 Commando, Jan Kemp Dorp, \"E\" Coy." matches this record's own Unit exactly.

Citations
Unknown
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