EOD History Path
Reflection, Legacy, and Resolve
The EOD History Path is a deeply meaningful part of the EOD Memorial Grounds, originally established in 2021 as a key element of the Remembrance Garden expansion project. Designed as a place of reflection and tribute, the winding path connects the EOD Memorial with the Remembrance Garden—serving not only as a physical link but also as a symbolic journey. Its curves and turns represent the many challenges EOD technicians face in their service, from training to battlefield operations and beyond.
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In 2024, the EOD Warrior Foundation enhanced the path with the addition of four concrete pillars, each embedded with original cenotaphs from the Memorial’s first construction in 1969. These pillars were dedicated on August 9, 2024, and now stand as powerful markers along the path, telling the story of EOD from its beginnings in 1941 to the present day. Through these historical touchstones, the EOD History Path ensures that the legacy of our fallen heroes, and the evolution of the EOD mission, will always be honored and remembered.
Explosive Ordnance Disposal Memorial and Remembrance Garden
This Memorial and Remembrance Garden stands witness to the history of Explosive Ordnance Disposal, and to those men and women who chose to serve, by providing a permanent reminder to us all of the sacrifices they made.
The Memorial is dedicated to those who gave their lives performing the many missions for which all EOD technicians are trained and tasked. The Remembrance Garden is a place of honor for family and friends to show respect to all EOD technicians—past, present, and future—and the struggles they face serving in this profession. Both shall forever ensure that We Remember.
On February 14, 1969, in the midst of the Vietnam War, a committee of senior EOD service leaders was created to raise funds for a Memorial to remember our dead. The inaugural EOD Ball, intended to collect donations for its construction, was held on September 20, 1969.
From this effort, the original EOD Memorial was dedicated on June 12, 1970, at the Naval Ordnance Station at Indian Head, Maryland, 29 years after the first bomb disposal personnel began training in Washington. The Memorial was located near the entrance to the station, on the corner of Jackson and Strauss Avenues.
Research was done at that time by each service to identify and recognize Navy Mine Disposal, Army & Navy Bomb Disposal, and EOD personnel who had been lost, honoring them by placing their names upon the individual service’s plaques.
The Memorial was reconstructed in its present location, adjacent to the Naval School EOD at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, and dedicated on February 3, 2000.
Every year, on the first Saturday in May, we recite the names of everyone listed on the Memorial, from 1942 to the present. We also add the new names of those lost in the previous year or in the decades past as we identify our missing. This day of commemoration has been declared National EOD Day by act of 111th U.S. Congress to honor those who are members of our noble and self-sacrificing profession.
The History of Explosive Ordnance Disposal
The story of EOD is one of constantly rising to new challenges, to meet the ever-widening threats posed by military ordnance, improvised explosive devices, weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, and the advanced technologies of tomorrow.
The field of Explosive Ordnance Disposal was born in the horrors of the Second World War. Decades of weapons development by Nazi Germany had yielded an array of sophisticated munitions never seen in the history of warfare: time-delay fuzes, butterfly bombs, ballistic missiles. America’s first bomb disposal technicians were volunteers who learned from their British counterparts by clearing sea mines and unexploded ordnance during The Blitz. Some of these bombs carried newly-developed anti-handling fuzes, designed specifically to kill those trying to make them safe. Losses in Britain were tragically high.
The U.S. military saw that they needed professional bomb technicians with formal training and specialized tools. In June 1941, the U.S. Navy began mine disposal training in Washington, D.C. The following year, the Army opened its bomb disposal school at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. The first successful students became the instructors for the following classes. In time, trained bomb technicians served throughout the European and Pacific theatres, laying the foundation for the profession as a whole.
After the war, in 1946, the Navy training course was re-named Explosive Ordnance Disposal, and moved to Indian Head, Maryland. By 1955, EOD training for all military services was consolidated at that Naval School, and in 1999 the joint course was fully transitioned to Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. The standard divisions developed decades ago are still taught today: core fundamentals of reconnaissance, demolitions, tools and methods, ground ordnance, air ordnance, improvised explosive devices, biological and chemical munitions, radiological and nuclear weapons, and underwater ordnance for Navy students.
The unique school, in which officers and enlisted personnel of all military branches learn and train together, gives U.S. combat units the ability to have EOD technicians from all services work seamlessly together as integrated teams. The profession transcends typical boundaries and has forged an identity, a brotherhood and sisterhood, of its own.
When the Korean War began in 1950, the U.S. military was caught unprepared. Faced with urgent deployments, the services realized they needed to quickly increase personnel and update training and equipment. In spite of these shortfalls, plus the extreme weather conditions and tenacious enemy, EOD personnel again excelled in their work. The jet age had come, and with it, an ever-expanding arsenal.
As the Cold War set in, the EOD mission set grew. In 1954, EOD was tasked with the emergency render-safe and disposal of America’s growing nuclear weapons stockpile. This mission would expand as the U.S. developed the nuclear triad – intercontinental ballistic missiles, strategic bombers, and submarine-launched missiles – and EOD units pulled alert until the end of the Cold War. In 1962, EOD capabilities grew, to include the emergency safing, technical escort, and disposal of chemical and biological munitions. At the same time, improvised explosive devices began to be used in the civilian population, and EOD began to assist police throughout the United States. These new missions required advanced training and equipment. Over the decades, EOD units would add de-armers, bomb suits, and the earliest robots.
The first EOD forces sent to South Vietnam were advisors in 1965. The Vietnam War was considerably different than previous conflicts. EOD forces faced new threats and responded with innovative tactics and capabilities. An unconventional war without front lines, EOD technicians cleared tunnels and foxholes with an endless number of booby traps, conducted extensive clearance operations in harbors and waterways, defended air bases from indirect fire and infiltration, and first supported special operations missions.
Success came despite being stretched to the limits. At the height of the war, in June 1969, when the U.S. had more than 500,000 military personnel in South Vietnam, there were less than 300 EOD technicians deployed to support combat operations. Over the course of the war, EOD technicians from all branches would serve with distinction until U.S. forces left the country in 1973.
The First Gulf War presented yet another novel set of challenges for EOD forces. Operation Desert Shield began in August 1990 and EOD units prepared for unprecedented attacks with chemical weapons. Skills honed in the 1980s, such as preparing to recover bases and airfields, were unexpectedly put to use in the Persian Gulf. In the ensuing conflict, EOD units supported the full spectrum of combat operations, especially the widespread clearance of Kuwait and the large scale capture and disposal of millions of tons of enemy munitions. Â
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, EOD units deployed across the world to fight a new kind of war. The twenty-year fight that followed saw more EOD technicians deployed on more missions, in more countries, and battling a wider variety of enemy devices, than ever before in the profession’s history.
To fight this new war, EOD forces gathered capabilities that pushed the limits of their training and technological research. This mission added modern bomb suits, electronic warfare jammers, a fleet of armored vehicles, explosive detectors, and robots of all shapes and sizes. EOD technicians also gathered new skills to embed with special operations forces, allowing them to attack bomb-makers directly, collect weapons intelligence, and conduct counter-terrorism missions.Â
The Global War on Terror took a terrible toll of killed and wounded. No armor or jammer is strong enough to deflect every attack. It still takes a person with a special blend of intelligence, strength, and courage to be an EOD technician.
Today, EOD men and women of the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force with full knowledge of the history and dangers of the profession, are responding without hesitation, as did all those who preceded them.
