The ice cream curls off the scoop just like the big ones breaking off the coast of Maui. I look inside the curl to see if there’s anyone shooting the pipe. All I see are the tiny speck of vanilla beans. They look like specks of pepper. I wish I knew how to modify photos in the computer. What a great photo that would make; a surfer shooting the pipeline inside the vanilla ice cream, or maybe a snow-boarder, using it as a half pipe.

I remember my dad telling me about the time they got ice cream in New Guinea during the war. He never called it World War II, or “the Good War” or “the big war”; just “the war”, as if that was the only war there ever was, and anyone ought to know. He didn’t mean to belittle anyone else’s war; he recognized that the guys in ‘Nam were getting killed just as dead as his buddies in the Pacific Theater did. And he told me once, “Veteran’s Day is the LEAST they can do for those guys. Every combat veteran deserves every benefit he can get out of Uncle Sam, ‘cause he earned it.”

So, I understood that when he said “the war”, he meant his war, not mine. Well, I can’t rightly say “mine”; I never saw combat, but it was my generation’s war. And that was okay. I knew what he meant.

So, one day, sometime in Fall of 1944, after being bored out of their minds with run-of-the-mill Army chow, they somehow got a shipment of ice cream from the Australians. But the mess sergeant, who had been an auto mechanic in civilian life, remembered that the best ice cream had black specks in it. Not knowing any better, he dumped a bunch of pepper in the ice cream and ruined it. Dad said they didn’t get ice cream again until after they came home.

I asked him if it was for Thanks giving, and he said, “No, it was before that, ‘cause I flew up to the front to have Thanksgiving dinner with Uncle Edwin * . The pilots were a little flak happy, and flew evasive maneuvers all the way up and back. I was incredibly airsick. Uncle Edwin was a regimental commander in the infantry. You can imagine the reaction of the rest of the guys in my unit when I, a Tech 3 signalman, got a call from the 383rd Regiment Commander, and was chatting to him on the phone like I’d known him for years.”

I know my limitations. I’m a musician, not a photographer. So I push the scoop the rest of the way across the box, and deposit a nice round ball into my dish. Two more, a squirt of chocolate syrup, and my desert is ready.

* “Uncle Edwin” was Col Edwin T May, 383d Regiment Commander, 96 th Infantry, KIA during the Battle of Okinawa, on April 5, 1945.

While I was writing this story, I couldn’t remember which regiment was Uncle Edwin’s, so I did a search for him online, and turned this up:

WWII AMERICAN OFFICER'S JACKET ID'd KILLED KIA 96TH DIV

S old Date: 11/12/2007

Channel: Online Auction Source: eBay Category: Militaria & Weapons Up for bid is an original 1937 dated American army officer's jacket, cap and belt. These items are identified to WWII hero Capt. (later Colonel) Edwin T. May. The jacket is very high quality and was manufactured by Brooks Brothers in New York. The jacket is in nice condition and has a 96th "deadeye" Division patch sewn on the sleeve, and includes the original belt. The cap is in decent condition and has a few moth nips. It is identified to May in period ink on the liner band. T is no size tagging present. Colonel Edwin T. May was killed in action on Kochinda, Okinawa April 5th 1945 while commanding the 383rd Regiment of the 96th Division. Colonel May won the Distinguished Service Cross and Silver Star on Leyte, and there is a monument dedicated to him on Okinawa. Also killed during the fighting on Okinawa were Ernie Pyle, and General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., who was the highest ranking American officer killed in action during the war.

What the ebay ad does not say is those three were just well-known individuals out of 12,520 American troops, 110,071 Japanese troops, and 142,058 Phillipine civilians killed in the Battle of Okinawa.
The cover photo is of my father at Uncle Edwin's gravesite on Okinawa, in September, 1945. After the war, Col. Edwin T. May was reinterred in Arlington National Cemetary