The South Africans buried at Arlington National Cemetery

A South African was buried in a common grave at Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, USA, and unbeknownst to his family for 30 years. Lieutenant Victor Potgieter was born on 30 November 1914 and grew up in Carolina, South Africa, the son of Marthinus Philippus Gerhardus Potgieter (1888 – 1965) and Susanna Catharina Minnie (1892 – 1977).

He had 3 siblings:
Amalia Potgieter (1916 – ). She married Folkers Johannes Petrus Swart.
Benjamin (Ben) Potgieter (1918 – 2012).
Minnie Potgieter (1930 – 2017). She married Gerhardus Jacobus Laubscher (1925 – 1981) and Lucas Barry Hertzog Lindeque (1918 – 2009). Minnie was named as the sole beneficiary in Victor’s last will and inherited £1159 from his estate.

Victor graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand, where he earned a B.Sc Civil Engineering, before volunteering for active service in 1940. He went missing in September 1944 on a secretive mission during World War II. He remained a mystery until his family found out about his last resting place in 1981 in a newspaper report.

His last recorded posting was in May 1943, at 104 Water Sections, South African Engineering Corps (service number: 131877V). There are only two movement orders recorded for him after this date, and they don’t give up any clues. He was posted as missing in 1944, and his date of death was recorded as 09 September 1944 (age 30 years and 3 months). Because individual remains could not be identified, he was buried in a common grave with 11 other men. All that the American authorities knew about him was his name, and they assumed he was a British national.

Victor was home on leave from Egypt two months before his death, according to his brother Ben. He had told his brother that he had volunteered for a mission and he would be photographing bridges to be bombed.

By 1944, the war in North Africa started winding down, and the South African units moved to Italy to take part in the push north. In Cairo, Lt Potgieter volunteered to do more than build bridges and dig wells. His passion led him to fly into enemy territory at night with British and American servicemen, often parachuting to liaise with Tito’s partisans in Yugoslavia and the Balkans. Lt Potgieter became part of an Allied team tasked with supporting Yugoslavian opposition to the Wehrmacht, which had invaded the Balkans, in defeating the Soviet Union. The leader was an American engineer and pilot, Major Linn Markley Farish (aka Lawrence of Yugoslavia), of the 2677 Special Reconnaissance Regiment, who was posthumously awarded the American Distinguished Service Cross and Purple Heart. Farish was the US Army Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Liaison Officer with the Yugoslav Resistance Movement in Yugoslavia. The OSS was the precursor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Farish’s initial role was to map out landing strips for US aircraft to rescue downed US airmen, but he also participated in rescue operations, rescuing airmen shot down over Yugoslavia by parachuting into territory controlled by the Yugoslav Resistance Movement.

Lt Potgieter was killed when the aircraft, a Dakota C-47 (43-48314) of the 12th Troop Carrier Squadron based in Brindisi, crashed on the night of 09 September 1944. They were flying in severe weather, and the aircraft suffered a dual engine failure while on a mission. The aircraft crashed into the side of a mountain near the village of Stevenikon. The resulting fire made individual identification impossible. The drop zone was to have been in two areas, about 10 km apart, controlled by the Lillian Mission. The first drop was for stores, and the other one was for personnel. An eyewitness reported that the first drop was successful. As the aircraft circled for its second drop, the engines cut out, triggering a parachute flare before the aircraft crashed. Lillian personnel recovered the bodies and buried them in a common grave at Levadhia, Greece. On September 5, 1945, the remains were reburied in the Phaleron War Cemetery in Athens. On May 22, 1951, Arlington National Cemetery reburied the bodies in Section 2, Site 3434-F. The South African Embassy in Washington began to pay an annual Remembrance Day tribute at his grave from 1993.

The 9th of September marked the beginning of operations that led to the 2nd British Expedition to Greece, which took place from October 12 to 16. Special Forces and SOE Force 133 carried out the majority of the preparation work.

The deceased were:

United States:
Capt. Paul E. Davison Jr., Pilot and OC of the 12th TCS
2nd Lt Joseph C. Volk, Co-Pilot
Capt. Edward L Quegan, Navigator
Lt Col. Linn Markley Farish, OSS
S/Sgt. Peter Gingeresky, Radio Operator
Cpl. Theron E. Hoxsie, Engineer

Great Britain:
Maj. Clifford Roy Forbes-Harris, SOE Force 133, Royal Engineers
Lt-Col. Edgar Herbert Hiscocks, SOE Force 133, Royal Armoured Corps
Cpl Kenneth William Clarence Thomas. SOE Force 133. Royal Corps of Signals
Capt. Geoffrey Watson. SOE Force 133, Royal Artillery.
AC2 Alojz Poberaj. Air Dispatcher. RAFVR. Yugoslav.

South Africa:
Lieutenant Victor Potgieter served in SOE Force 133, South African Engineer Corps.

The second South African buried at Arlington National Cemetery was Athelstan Frederick Spilhaus. He was born on 25 November 1911 in Cape Town and spent his early years on a farm near Natal. Spilly, as he was known, attended schools in the United Kingdom before returning to South Africa and being admitted to the University of Cape Town. He graduated with a B.Sc. in 1931 and a doctorate in oceanography in 1948. He moved to the USA in 1931, where he earned a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1933 and a D.Sc. from Coe College in 1961. He was a research assistant at MIT from 1934 to 1935 and then became Assistant Director of Technical Services for the Union of South Africa’s Defence Force until 1936. In 1947, he served as meteorological advisor for the Union of South Africa. He became an American citizen in 1946.

By a special Act of Congress in 1943, he became a temporary officer in the US Army Air Corps. In 1944 and 1945 he ran weather stations in northern China, living in caves near Mao Tse-Tung’s headquarters behind Japanese lines, supplying weather reports critical to US bombers out of Guam and Saipan.

He received numerous honours and 11 honorary degrees, including the French Legion of Merit and Sweden’s Berzelius Medal. The French Legion of Merit and Sweden’s Berzelius Medal. His awards also included a Decorated Legion of Merit Exceptional Civilian Service Medal from the U.S. Air Force and a Patriotic Civilian Service Award from the US Army. A man of many talents, he was also a sculptor and collected antique mechanical toys. He wrote 11 books and published more than 300 articles. He is credited with the research and development of meteorological equipment, radar and radio upper wind finding, and the development of meteorological instruments for measurements from aircraft in flight.

He died of chronic pulmonary disease on 30 March 1998 at his home in Middleburg, Virginia, USA. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery (Columbarium 4, PP-16-2) with full military honours. He was survived by his wife, Kathleen Ann Fitzgerald; two sons, A.F. Jr of Potomac and Karl Henry of Needham, Mass.; a daughter, Margaret Ann Morse of Richmond; 13 grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren. His wife died in 2011.

The third South African buried at Arlington National Cemetery is PFC Christopher Warren Lotter. He was born on 16 March 1988 in George, South Africa. He was known by his middle name and had last lived in Chester Heights, Pennsylvania. He died on 31 December 2008, at 20 years of age. He was buried at Section 60, Site 8766. He grew up in Mossel Bay, and after matriculating in 2006, immigrated to the U.S., where he became a U.S. citizen before joining the U.S. Army in January 2008.

He trained as a cannon crew member at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. In June 2008 he was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 7th Field Artillery Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, based at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, and deployed to Iraq in October 2008. He died in Balad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when he was shot by a sniper in Tikrit while standing in the gunner’s hatch of an armoured vehicle trying to secure an area around the city’s water plant at the Khadasia General Hospital. He is survived by his father Barry of Chester Heights, mother Marlene Coertze in South Africa, sister Michelle, and brother Justin.

During January 2009, Private Lotter’s family travelled to the U.S. for the funeral and internment service at the Arlington National Cemetery. U.S. Congressman Joe Sestak (D-PA), who served as the elected representative for the district in which Private Lotter’s father lives in Pennsylvania, met with the family at the U.S. Capitol Building and attended the funeral service at Arlington together with the U.S. Secretary of the Army. Private Lotter was awarded a Bronze Star and Purple Heart posthumously.

On 15 September 2009, in a ceremony at the U.S. Embassy in South Africa, his mother received the State of Hawaii’s Medal of Honour on behalf of her late son, who was based at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. The Hawaii Medal of Honour was established to express the deep appreciation and gratitude from the people of Hawaii to the loved ones of members of the military with connections to Hawaii who sacrificed their lives in defense of the United States of America.