Often these call signs had historical significance, referring to a unit’s nickname. The 4th Armored Division was known, throughout the Army, as the Iron Horse Division. Hence Scott Dixon, the commander, was Iron Horse Six, the number six being used exclusively to identify commanding officers. Colonel Felden was Iron Horse Seven, the assistant division commander, Iron Horse Five, the division G3 Iron Horse Three, and so on. Sometimes the unauthorized call signs were changed by a particular commander to fit his personality or that of his unit. This was true in the case of the Division Artillery commander, Colonel Peter Wilder. Given the nickname “Wild Thing” at West Point, he carried it around like a badge of honor. When he came to the 4th Armored, the division staff began to refer to their counterparts on the Div Arty staff as the Wild Bunch. The name stuck, leading to the adoption of Wild Thing Six for Colonel Wilder. Unfortunately for the division staff, Peter Wilder saw his nickname as more than a mere handle. It was an image both he and his staff endeavored to live up to.

Even now, as he and the other colonels who commanded the brigade-size components of the 4th Armored waited for Iron Horse Six to make his entrance, Peter Wilder was making his presence known. “You know,” he called out to no one in particular as he poured himself a cup of coffee, “if half my battery commanders could achieve the same degree of synchronization that the CG and his wife always seem to pull off, I’d be the hottest damned artillery commander since Napoleon.”

“Well,” Bob Felden responded as he entered the room and made for the table where both Wilder and the coffee were, “you’d definitely be the shortest one since Bonaparte.”

Spinning about to face Felden, an aviator, Wilder smiled. “Remember, Bob, it’s speed and accuracy that matters, not the size of the projectile.”

From the conference table the commander of the 2nd Brigade, Larry Fisher, chuckled. “Well,” he announced to the assembled senior leadership of the division, “if what Pete’s wife says is true, Wild Thing strikes out on everything save speed.”

This brought a general round of laughter from everyone in the room save Clyde Emerson, commander of the 1st Brigade. It was one of his units training in the field that Scott Dixon had been visiting. Though he had confidence that the commander of the unit was doing what he was supposed to, no one ever knew for sure. After all, it was almost a truism that general officers had an innate sense of timing when it came to visiting a unit just when it was entering the throes of a major crisis.

As if to prove that point, a voice from someone near the door yelled out, “Atten-tion!”