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Billy (D A M)

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Identity
Person No.
38951
Service No.
RAR 3430
Last Name
First Name
Unknown
Initials
D A M
Date of Birth
Unknown
Est. Birth Year
Age at Death
Unknown
Death Record
Date of Death
Cause code
DOAS 7,466
Died on active service
Cause of Death
Died on active service
Military Service
Rank
Private
Secondary Unit
3 Platoon
Defence Force
UK 4,095
British forces
Unit History
Notes

Post war death in CWGC care

Research notes

Database-wide FirstName/Age/Unit contamination sweep, 28 Sep 2026 (John's hypothesis, tested and confirmed on 3 sample groups before running at scale): FirstName 'David Anthony Michael', Age 34 and Unit '8th Battalion' were forward-filled from PersonNumber 38950 down a contiguous run of 2 records -- this record's own LastName ('Billy'), Initials ('D A M'), ServiceNo ('RAR 3430') and DateDeath ('1952-10-02') are all genuinely distinct from every other record in the run, confirming a different real person whose FirstName/Age/Unit were simply never captured (source pattern consistent with a SAPS memorial table using rowspan for Name/Age/Province, mis-copied by the scraper onto every row). FirstName, Age and Unit CLEARED; no replacement guessed. CauseDeath NOT touched -- it follows its own, narrower sub-block boundaries within this run and carries real distinguishing information.
CORRECTION, 28 Sep 2026: the earlier note on this record wrongly described Unit as forward-filled/contaminated alongside FirstName and Age. On review, Unit values proved to be common, genuinely correct data shared by many unrelated real people throughout this dataset (e.g. 'Western Cape' alone appears on 195 scattered, unrelated records with 111 distinct surnames) -- Unit was NOT part of this contamination and has been RESTORED from the pre-sweep backup. FirstName and Age remain correctly cleared -- both were 100% correlated across every contaminated run and independently confirmed absent on SAWGP's own record for spot-checked samples.

Citations

***Not yet accepted for War Grave Status by CWGC, need service file

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