William A. Richardson, a retired Army major who died Nov. 29 at 94, began his military career as a mounted soldier in one of the Army’s last horse cavalry units. He ended his service as a civilian officer in the Army Intelligence and Security Command, an agency that gathers and processes vital information and intelligence for military and civilian leaders.

As a teenager he built roads in Colorado with the Civilian Conservation Corps, a Depression-era agency of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.

In his early 20s he rode and groomed horses with the 7th Regiment of the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division. He patrolled the U.S.-Mexico border and guarded bridges.

He was “a true horse cavalryman, replete with Stetson, spurs, saber, and his trusty mount,” a friend wrote of him more than 70 years later in a newsletter of the 7th Cavalry Association.

In retirement he made guitars.

There yet remained an element of romance and mystique in the horse cavalry when the future major was a raw recruit. World War II was already raging in Europe. There would be no place in the mechanized warfare of the 20th century for soldiers on horseback.

William Archie Richardson was born into a ranching family in Salida, Colo., on Jan 28, 1921. He joined the Army in 1940 at the age of 19, with two years in the CCC behind him, mostly in Rocky Mountain National Park and at Colorado National Monument.

An Army officer at the induction depot learned he’d grown up on a ranch and suggested he ask for an assignment in the horse cavalry, which he did. He was sent to join the 7th Cavalry at Fort Bliss, Texas.

Included in the training exercises was target pistol practice while riding at a full gallop, Maj. Richardson later told his family. Many of the recruits were experienced riders, but not all. One man was so inept that he shot his own horse in the head while trying to practice marksmanship with his pistol.

In early 1943 the 1st Cavalry Division was deployed to Australia, but without its horses. The riders of that division became foot soldiers and trained as infantrymen.

He would serve in New Guinea, the Admiralty Islands and the Philippines, and was in Tokyo Bay when the Japanese signed the documents of surrender on Sept. 2, 1945, bringing the war to an end.

He later was commissioned as an officer. In 1956 he was assigned to the Army Security Agency in Arlington, Va. He retired in 1961, then worked an additional 23 years as a civilian, retiring from the Intelligence and Security Command in 1984.

Survivors include his wife of 73 years, Eva Ulias Richardson, and two daughters.

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