Louwrens

Hallo Thomas, As I mentioned the other day, my wife and I were neigbours of the Van der Riets. That was in Pretoria during the 1980s. Gen Booysie Van der Riet's son was also a SA Army officer. I forget his given name, but will inquire from people who served with him. If I am not mistaken, the son reached the rank of Lt. Col. (or Commandant - I do not now recall the dates of the various changes in title!), but he left the SADF and South Africa for the USA sometime in the early 1990s. It is quite possible that the person cited in http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-carbary/4-reasons-most-people-wil_b_6831106.html is Booysie vd Riet's namesake grandson. "Hits" will fill one or two Google pages if you do a search on Renaut van der Riet. I once tried to contact the grandson with regard to photos from WW2 which I found in my father-in-law's collection (see below), but I have not received a reply. Another piece of non-information - 'non' because it is vague and I have thus far failed to recover the report: Earlier this year I stumbled across a brief report (in Die Burger archives, I seem to recall) on General Van der Riet's funeral in (I think) Cape Town. If the funeral was indeed in the Western Cape, that might go some distance to tracing the route of the knife. Perhaps the General moved to the Cape after his wife's death. I would hope that the medals are still with the family. As for my late father-in-law's connection with Booysie: At the end of the campaign in Italy, Booysie and Capt. H. W. 'Tommy' Torr (ex-DMR, in Italy with the RDLI) travelled around to thank Italian families who looked after escapee SA POWs. We have some photographs taken by Tommy of one such family - including photos which show the then Major Van der Riet with the family. Regards, Louwrens

A comment 7 years later. I found the posts when Googling for information on Lt Gen Van der Riet. I knew him personally - we were neighbours for some years during the 1980s - and he and my late father-in-law on occasion served together with the 6th SAAD in Italy (WW 2). You may want to have a look at i.a. http://samilitaryhistory.org/vol082lw.html http://alchetron.com/Werndly-Van-der-Riet-1383729-W There are also references in Jack Kros's War in Italy. Regards, Louwrens