"Dial Your Number..."

 I didn't know what to call this post, so I went with the phrase that won the game. Confused? Read on.

During my second Army tour in West Germany (1972-76), I was initially assigned to the G-3 Operations, Training Section of the 1st Armored Division stationed in Ansbach, about 30 miles southwest of Nuremberg in Bavaria.

It was almost exclusively a desk job. As one of three captains in the section (the others were infantry and artillery) and the only armor officer, I had staff responsibility for anything to do with the training of the tank battalions in the division. I would coordinate with the three brigades, and sometimes the six individual battalions, on the annual gunnery qualifications, the tactical tests, and other required training.

Since the division was spread over a fairly large area of Bavaria which included cities such as Wurzberg, Crailsheim, Illesheim, Bamberg, Erlangen, Furth, Schwabach, Grafenwohr, and Zirndorf in addition to Nuremberg and Ansbach, most of our coordination was by telephone.

Our military communications between Army posts was through the West German telephone system. Consequently, whenever we called another post, we would have to go through the German operators who were all female and spoke excellent English. Actually, it was not a live operator, but a recording who would announce the town and say something like, "Ansbach, dial your number." Then we dial the military number.

We never saw the operators, but each town had different female voices. After a while, it was easy to tell which town one was dialing just by listening to the woman's voice.

One day the three of us, Jan (the infantry officer, Ron (the artillery officer), and myself decided to conduct a contest. It was a slow day. Each of us called every post location and rated the operators on a scale of 1-10, ten being the best. We then tallied the results to determine the winner.

The same operator was unanimously chosen hands down with a perfect score of 30. Two of us thought she was a brunette, while one was convinced she was blonde. We never met her. Then again, since the system had been around for some time, we couldn't be sure how old she was at the present - or even if she was still alive.

Oh! Who won? It was not any of the Division's unit locations, but a training area that all of the U.S. Army's tank divisions in Europe would train at annually. And BTW, Hitler trained his mechanized forces there before and during WW2.

"Grafenwohr, dial your number."