Going With The Flow

I've written before of the military service of my father. He served for thirty years and fought in three wars. We don't have too much in common service-wise. My war, the Gulf War, was very different from his three.

We do have similar ice cream stories, though.

When he was a young sailor out in the Pacific, he and his friends stole the CO2 from a nearby fire extinguisher, hid in a closet, and made ice cream from a mix. An officer caught them. The greatest danger aboard ship is not flood, but fire. They had rendered a fire extinguisher useless and according to regulations, the officer should send them to the brig.
Instead, the officer asked them to give him a bowl. He ate his ice cream while they stood there and then he told them that when they were finished eating they were to repair the fire extinguisher.

When I was on maneuvers once in Augsburg, we were in place waiting to repel the attack of Gold, or whichever color was coming to fight us. We'd been waiting for the attack for hours, lying quietly, fingers on triggers, when suddenly we heard a cheery, chiming little melody, and a German ice cream truck came rolling down the avenue of approach.
A bunch of the guys got up and started running to the ice cream truck, hands already reaching for wallets. I heard the Captain cursing, then he screamed angrily, "You knuckleheads! Get back here!" The jingling song coming from the loudspeaker on the truck must have drowned out his words, because they kept going.
A few seconds later I heard the Captain's voice again, but this time the tone was different. And this time he called out, "Hey! Bring me a vanilla cone!"