Many South Africans served in various areas around the world and possibly died with nobody having any recording of their whereabouts.A good example is a South African soldier “discovered” 1981 buried in an American Cemetery.For nearly 50 years World War II soldier Lieutenant Victor Potgieter lay unacknowledged in a common grave in the U.S, until his family learned of his whereabouts in 1981.

The fate of Lieutenant Potgieter, who grew up in Carolina, Mpumalanga, and attended Wits before volunteering for active service in 1940, remained a mystery for half a century. He went missing in 1944 and his family in South Africa did not know his fate until 1981 when they read a newspaper article about an unknown soldier named Potgieter who lay unaccounted for in the United States; most revered military cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.

The lieutenant’s brother, Ben Potgieter of Arcadia, told the Pretoria News in 1993 that he believed his brother was involved in a clandestine operation when his plane was shot down and crashed in Greece.”Victor was home on leave from Egypt two months before his death,” Ben Potgieter was quoted as saying. “He told me he had volunteered for a mission and he would be photographing bridges there were to blow up.”When Potgieter was first brought to the United States, all the authorities knew was his name. He was not registered as being on a mission in the area with any army. With no other leads, his headstone was marked as a British soldier.