Mr. Alan Richwald

Mr. Alan Richwald was born on February 11, 1938, in Queens, New York. He joined the Army in 1957 and attended the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) course at Indian Head, Maryland and began a 23-year Army career in EOD, including an assignment to Vietnam in 1962.

He culminated his Army career as a Sergeant First Class with an assignment to Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey, as the Non-Commissioned Officer-in-Charge assigned to the Foreign Ordnance Team tasked to develop EOD Render Safe Procedures for newly developed U.S. and first seen foreign ordnance. Due to his keen interest in ordnance, he immediately excelled in this mission. This passion would set the trend for the rest of his professional career and result in an opus of countless EOD publications and technical documents.

Mr. Richwald retired from the Army in 1980 and he immediately began his federal service career at Picatinny Arsenal working on the exploitation of foreign ordnance. During his tenure, he served as the team lead for the quick reaction team for 36 years deploying worldwide in support of various intelligence agencies. He collected hundreds of first seen foreign ordnance items which required the creation of render safe procedures and wrote and contributed to innumerable volumes on foreign ordnance. These publications included the ordnance identification country guides, the high risk munitions book, and render safe procedures for newly developed foreign ordnance. Mr. Richwald passed on his knowledge to EOD Soldiers during pre-deployment training for locations around the world, including Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan.