Yeo , Edward Clive (E C)

DATE DISCREPANCY 25 Aug 2026: pantser.cmvo.org.za's SADF deaths PDF gives this person's Sterf (date of death) as "20 04 88" (DD MM YY) against the same ServiceNo (84572890BG) and name -- differs from this record's DateDeath (1988-04-19). Not overwritten, flagged for reference.
War in Angola forum, Chris (czehnder0@gmail.com) via Johan Schoeman (posts 54072–54073, 18 Nov 2025): Cpl Edward Yeo was 25 Field Squadron (SA Engineer Corps); SWA forces laying an ambush borrowed a sapper for three nights; his kit remained with 25 Field Sqn, who put him on the aircraft home. Record Unit stays 101 Battalion (the attachment already on file); HomeUnitID now 25 Field Squadron.
Personal communication, Dave Bax (19 Field Engineer Regiment), via John Dovey, 16 Sep 2026. Dave served at the time and knew Yeo. His account: "Eddie was a corporal and is on the roll of honour... he functioned a faulty number eight in early 1988 in laying ambushes in Angola... he was not 19 Field, he was 25 Field." On the aftermath: the Recce team he was working with pulled back because nothing of him could be seen; his family, who were Jewish, pressed hard for remains to bury, so the Special Forces element redeployed at night with another sapper officer and recovered only a small part of him in a boot, and the back of his head.
- CONFIRMS, independently: Rank Corporal; 25 Field Squadron as his home unit (already on file from the War in Angola forum account above, and already recorded as HomeUnitID 25 Field Squadron attached to 101 Battalion). Dave and the forum account are unconnected sources reaching the same unit.
- CONFIRMS: the family was Jewish, resolving the "***Jewish ?" query previously left open in AddInfo.
- CAUSE CONFLICT, flagged NOT overwritten: this record's CauseDeath says he was "disarming a landmine" with a secondary charge beneath it. Dave says he was *laying* an ambush and a faulty No. 8 functioned prematurely. [CORRECTED 16 Sep 2026: this entry originally read "a faulty No. 8 detonator" -- that was my misreading. The "number eight" is the No 8 anti-tank mine, not a detonator. See the continuation of Dave's account below.] These are different mechanisms -- laying a charge, not lifting a mine. Notably the War in Angola account also has him borrowed by SWA forces specifically to lay an ambush, so two independent sources now describe an ambush-laying task rather than a mine-clearing one. Left unchanged pending documentary evidence, but this is the likeliest correction on the record.
- Location given as Angola (not currently stated on the record).
- Date: Dave recalls "early 1988" against the stored 19 April 1988 (and the 20 April 1988 variant flagged above). A recollection at nearly forty years' distance; noted, not weighed against the documentary dates.
- Note for future research: the grave reference on file is a CREMATION NICHE (B1-1, Thaba Tshwane New Military Cemetery). Cremation is contrary to Jewish burial practice, which sits oddly beside Dave's account of a family pressing for remains to bury. Either the recovered remains were dealt with otherwise than the family wished, or the GraveRef needs checking. Not resolved here.
SAME SOURCE, CONTINUED -- Dave Bax, 16 Sep 2026, relayed to John Dovey by Maj Matthew Everitt (Rtd), from whose WhatsApp the messages were sent. The account and every opinion in it are DAVE'S; Everitt added no commentary of his own and is named only as the channel. This is therefore a continuation of the account above, NOT a second source confirming it. Given from memory ("I haven't looked at the schematics for 20 years") and dictated by voice-to-text. Full referenced write-up in `Yeo 33923 - the No 8 mine fuze failure.md`.
- THE MECHANISM: the No 8 anti-tank mine and the small R2M1 anti-personnel mine share a firing mechanism -- a spring-loaded striker retained by ball bearings seated in a red plastic core. On one production lot that core was moulded from substandard plastic. Yeo armed and disarmed the mine repeatedly across several successive nights while laying ambushes; the defective core cracked, the retaining balls slipped, and the striker was released, functioning the mine in his hands.
- CHECKED against published sources: the R2M1 fuze is documented as a striker retained by three balls in an outer collar, the striker "made from red plastic with a small sharp firing pin set into it" -- matching Dave's twenty-year-old recollection closely. His dictated "R1M1" is a voice-to-text slip: the R1M1 is a Claymore-type directional mine, not the small pressure-fuzed mine he describes. His statement that the No 8 uses the identical striker assembly is his own expert testimony as a field engineer, NOT confirmed by open sources, which describe only the No 8's external ARMED/SAFE arming lever.
- CAUSE OF DEATH -- the substantive point, flagged NOT overwritten: the stored CauseDeath says "the mine had a secondary charge buried under it which fired". Dave's account agrees he was handling/disarming a mine but contradicts the rest -- no secondary charge, no enemy booby-trap. The mine failed OF ITSELF through a manufacturing defect. This also settles the apparent conflict flagged earlier between "disarming a landmine" and "laying an ambush": both are correct, because the task was laying ambush mines at night and lifting them again, and it was that arming/disarming cycle that destroyed the fuze. DEFECTIVE OWN ORDNANCE rather than enemy action is a materially different account of how this man died. Left unchanged pending documentary confirmation.
- AFTERMATH: a formal investigation, which Dave recalls involved the CSIR and Armscor, traced the fault to one particular lot. The SOP was changed so that a mine could be armed once only and thereafter destroyed in situ, and the affected batches were destroyed. (Not to be confused with South Africa's 1997+ destruction of its entire AP mine stockpile.)
- WEIGHT OF EVIDENCE: this is ONE man's recollection at nearly forty years' distance, not two. The independent support that exists is narrower -- the War in Angola forum account (Chris via Johan Schoeman, Nov 2025) separately has Yeo borrowed by SWA forces specifically to lay an ambush and agrees on 25 Field Squadron. That corroborates the task and the unit; it says nothing about the fuze.
- RESEARCH LEAD: Dave believes Brahm Rossouw was OC 25 Field Squadron at the time, "if he's still alive" -- a potential first-hand source on Yeo and on the investigation.