‘The Americans Said, ‘Ice Cream for Dessert” | Female German POWs Thought It Impossible in Winter
I. The Arrival
The transport truck lurched violently as it navigated the deeply rutted, snow-slicked roads of eastern Wisconsin. Inside the canvas-covered bed, thirty-seven women huddled together, seeking warmth in the shared radiation of their own shivering bodies. It was December 1944. For Elsa Hartman, a twenty-one-year-old former university student from Hamburg, the journey felt less like a geographic relocation and more like a slow descent into an unimaginable void.
Only three weeks earlier, Elsa had been operating a heavy radio transceiver in a concealment bunker near a snow-choked crossroads in Belgium. When the American infantry overran her unit’s position during the chaotic retreats of the late autumn, she had expected immediate execution, or at the very least, the brutal, retributive violence that German propaganda films had promised would follow capture by the Allies. Instead, she had been processed through a series of cold, muddy holding pens, loaded onto a transatlantic troopship, and finally deposited onto this rattling truck heading into the freezing heart of the American Midwest.
Elsa pressed her pale face against a small tear in the frost-covered canvas window of the truck. Outside, the bleak, unfamiliar landscape drifted past. Bare-limbed oaks and maples stood like skeletal sentinels against a heavy, gray sky. The sight triggered an aching wave of memory. She was transported back to Hamburg—to the high-ceilinged lecture halls where she had studied romantic literature, to her quiet dreams of standing before a classroom of her own as a schoolteacher, and to the idyllic summer mornings of her childhood spent swimming in the clear, cool waters of Lake Oster. That world was gone, shattered by the relentless thud of Allied bombs and the desperate mobilization that had swept her into the Wehrmacht’s auxiliary communications corps the previous year. Now, her reality was reduced to the bitter cold biting at her toes and the terrifying certainty of captivity.
Beside her, Marlene Vogel clutched a small, stained canvas bag against her chest as if it were a shield. The bag contained everything Marlene had left in the world: two pairs of thick woolen socks, a black plastic comb with three missing teeth, and a creased, faded photograph of her parents standing proudly in front of their small bakery in Stuttgart. Marlene had been a typist in Elsa’s unit. In Belgium, her fingers had flown across the keys of an Enigma machine, translating urgent operational orders and intercepting Allied coordinates with disciplined precision. Now, those same fingers shook so violently with fear and cold that she could barely maintain her grip on her bag.
“Do you think they are taking us to a labor camp, Elsa?” Marlene whispered, her voice cracking. “My brother wrote to us from the Eastern Front before he… before he went missing. He said the camps there are where people go to vanish.”
“This is America, Marlene,” Elsa said, trying to inject a confidence into her voice that she did not possess. “It is different. It must be.”
The truck slowed to a crawl, groaned as it shifted gears, and finally ground to a halt. The heavy canvas flap at the rear was thrown back, blinding the women with the sudden glare of snow-reflected light. Elsa braced herself, her muscles tightening in anticipation of shouts, rough hands, and the cruel bark of orders.
Instead, a young American sergeant with a scattering of bright freckles across his nose and a tuft of unruly red hair escaping his wool cap stepped up to the tailgate. He looked at the row of terrified, pale faces, cleared his throat, and spoke in a careful, highly accented, yet perfectly intelligible German.
“Welcome to Camp Green Lake,” the sergeant said, offering a brief, almost tentative nod. “Please, step down carefully. The ice is treacherous. We have hot food waiting inside.”
Elsa blinked, momentarily incapacitated by the sheer incongruity of his tone. One by one, the women climbed down from the truck bed, their stiff legs nearly buckling as they hit the packed snow of the compound. Camp Green Lake did not look like the fortresses of despair Elsa had envisioned. It was a modest, remarkably clean complex of wooden barracks surrounded by a simple chain-link fence, nestled against a backdrop of towering white pines. There were no searchlights cutting through the afternoon gloom, no guard dogs snapping at their heels.
The red-haired sergeant guided them into the primary barracks. Inside, the air was thick with the scent of pine oil and woodsmoke. Rows of sturdy iron bunks lined the walls, each neatly made up with thick, dark green blankets. Greta Lindemann, a pragmatic Bavarian radio operator who had spent the entire journey across the Atlantic in a state of stony defiance, walked over to the nearest bunk. She reached out, pinched the fabric of the blanket between her thumb and forefinger, and rubbed it roughly.
“It is real wool,” Greta murmured, turning to Elsa with a look of profound bewilderment. “Pure, heavy wool. How can the Americans afford to give such comforts to their prisoners? In Germany, even the frontline infantry are wearing paper-blend tunics this winter.”
Elsa did not answer. She was looking out the window of the barracks, watching a group of off-duty American soldiers in the camp yard. To her utter astonishment, they were laughing. They were throwing packed handfuls of snow at one another, ducking behind a half-finished snowman, their breath blooming in white plumes against the twilight. For three years, Elsa had known men only as instruments of war—men who screamed in agony, men who shouted commands with veins bulging in their necks, men who died in the mud of France and Belgium. The sight of these young men playing like schoolboys in the snow felt entirely surreal, an hallucinatory vision from another lifetime. She felt a strange, painful tightening in her chest—a mixture of intense longing for the innocence of the past and a deep, deeply ingrained suspicion that this display of humanity was somehow an elaborate trap.
II. The Luxury of Winter
At six o’clock, the prisoners were marched across the quiet yard to the camp mess hall. The building was heated by two massive cast-iron stoves that radiated a fierce, luxurious heat that instantly thawed the deep chill in Elsa’s bones. The room was filled with the rich, intoxicating aroma of a thick beef stew and freshly baked white bread—crusts golden, interiors soft and steaming.
The thirty-seven women took their seats at long wooden trestle tables, sitting in an uneasy, watchful silence. They ate with a fierce, subdued intensity, holding their spoons tightly, as if expecting someone to snatch the metal trays away at any moment. Elsa tore off a piece of the white bread, marveling at its texture. In Germany, the bread had long since become a dark, dense brick extended with sawdust and potato flour. This American bread tasted of pure flour, milk, and peace.
As the meal drew to a close, a broad-shouldered American cook wearing a spotless white apron stepped out from the kitchen galley. He had kind, weathered eyes and a thick mustache that twitched as he looked over the assembly of German women. He knocked a wooden spoon against the side of a large aluminum pot to gather their attention.
“Listen up, ladies,” the cook announced through a bilingual guard who stood near the door. “Tomorrow evening is the final night of the month, and the colonel has authorized a special treat. Tomorrow, there will be ice cream for dessert.”
The translator repeated the words in German: “Morgen gibt es Speiseeis zum Nachtisch.”
A dead silence fell over the mess hall. Elsa sat frozen, her spoon hovering inches above her empty tray. She looked at Marlene, whose mouth had dropped open in sheer disbelief. In the winter of 1944, Germany was starving. The civilian population lived on rations of turnips and synthetic coffee; cities were burning, and the infrastructure of Europe was collapsing under the weight of total war. To hear a captor promise ice cream—a decadent luxury that required milk, sugar, refrigeration, and peace—in the dead of a Wisconsin winter, inside a prisoner-of-war camp, felt like an insult to their intelligence.
“It is a lie,” Greta muttered from down the table, her voice sharp with cynicism. “They are mocking us. They want to see us beg, or perhaps it is a psychological game to make us compliant.”
Elsa looked back at the cook. He wasn’t smiling maliciously; he was merely wiping his hands on his apron, looking at them with a detached, casual benevolence that was far more disorienting than cruelty would have been. That night, as she lay beneath the heavy wool blanket in her bunk, the promise of the ice cream haunted her. It became a symbol of the vast, terrifying gulf between the world she had left behind and the world she now inhabited.
Her mind drifted back to 1943, the year she had signed up for the women’s auxiliary corps, the Nachrichtenhelferinnen. She remembered the fierce pride in her father’s eyes when she first put on the gray uniform. He was a veteran of the Great War, a man who believed implicitly in duty, honor, and the defense of the Fatherland. Her mother had been gentler, slipping a small silver medallion of Saint Christopher into Elsa’s palm as she boarded the train for training in France.
“Be useful, Elsa,” her mother had whispered. “Help bring this terrible thing to an end so you can come home to your books.”
And Elsa had tried to be useful. In the communications posts behind the lines in France, she had thrown herself into her work. She had translated intercepted Allied radio traffic, encrypted complex German movements, and coordinated the logistics of supply routes heading toward the front lines. She had insulated herself from the reality of the violence by treating the war as a massive, intellectual puzzle—a series of codes to be broken, numbers to be shifted, and schedules to be maintained. She had never asked what those supply trucks contained, nor did she allow herself to contemplate the ultimate destination of the infantry divisions she routed across the map. She had told herself that her compliance was a duty, a necessary sacrifice to secure a swift peace.
But when the front collapsed after Normandy, the puzzle had dissolved into blood and panic. Her unit had been caught in a desperate retreat through the Ardennes. Elsa remembered the terrifying roar of American artillery, the smell of burning rubber and roasted flesh, and the sudden, overwhelming sight of khaki-clad soldiers emerging from the treeline with bayonets fixed. She had been captured at an anonymous crossroads outside a Belgian village whose name she had never learned, entirely convinced that her life was over.
Now, lying in a warm barracks in Wisconsin, she listened to the rhythmic breathing of thirty-six other captive women. She felt a profound, suffocating sense of guilt. Why was she here, safe, warm, and well-fed, while her family in Hamburg was likely shivering in an air-raid shelter? She was trapped in a system she had helped sustain, a cog in a machine that was currently being ground to dust across the Atlantic.
III. The Glowing Faces
By October of 1945, the rhythm of Camp Green Lake had established a strange, domestic stability, though the war in Europe had reached its catastrophic conclusion months prior. The transition from enemies to captives had shifted into a bizarre, temporary community.
As the American autumn deepened, turning the Wisconsin forests into a vibrant tapestry of crimson and gold, the camp’s atmosphere underwent a subtle, noticeable transformation. The guards, many of whom were young men who had been wounded in Europe or deemed unfit for frontline duty, began to treat the women less like prisoners and more like displaced persons who had survived the same global storm that had swept them up.
One bright morning, a young private named Mueller—a quiet, lanky soldier from Iowa who always seemed deeply conflicted about his role as a jailer—approached Elsa and a small group of women working in the vegetable garden near the barracks. He was wheeling a wooden cart filled to the brim with large, bright orange globes.
“Pumpkins,” Mueller said, halting the cart and lifting one of the heavy fruits. He looked at Elsa, knowing she spoke the best English among the group. “For Halloween. It’s an American tradition. We carve faces into them, put candles inside. The colonel says you can participate if you want.”
He set the pumpkin down on a wooden bench and produced a small, sharp carving knife from his pocket. He held it out toward them, handle first. It was an extraordinary gesture of trust—handing a weapon to a prisoner.
Greta stepped back, her eyes narrowing. “What is this foolishness? Carving vegetables?”
“It’s for the festival,” Mueller explained, his face reddening slightly. “To scare away the ghosts. Or just… for fun. Here, let me show you.” He took a seat on the bench, cut a circular lid around the stem of the pumpkin, and began scooping out the wet, stringy pulp with his bare hands.
Elsa watched him. There was something deeply grounding about the sight of this farm boy working with the harvest. She stepped forward, ignoring Greta’s warning glance, and reached into the cart to pull out a medium-sized pumpkin of her own. She took the knife from Mueller when he finished his demonstration.
Before the war, during her first year at the University of Hamburg, Elsa had taken a mandatory course in basic first aid and emergency field surgery, preparing for the inevitable civilian casualties of the air raids. She remembered the precise, clinical way she had been taught to handle a scalpel. Now, she positioned the carving knife against the tough orange skin of the pumpkin. Her hands, which had trembled with terror for the first six months of her captivity, were remarkably steady.
She didn’t carve a frightening monster. Instead, she carefully incised two wide, almond-shaped eyes, a delicate nose, and a soft, slightly upturned mouth. She worked with an intense, quiet focus, losing herself in the physical act of creation. For the first time in years, she wasn’t translating orders of destruction; she was creating a face. When she finished, she wiped the blade and handed it to Marlene, who was watching with a look of cautious curiosity.
“It looks peaceful, Elsa,” Marlene said, her voice soft.
“It looks like someone waiting for the spring,” Elsa replied.
As the final week of October progressed, the spirit of the American holiday took hold of the camp. The guards brought out dozens of pumpkins, and the initial hesitation of the German women dissolved into a shared, creative fervor. Even the most reserved prisoners joined in.
Helga, Ilsa, and Sophie—three young auxiliaries who had spent months in a state of deep depression—found themselves laughing as they cleared out the slippery seeds. Sophie, a vivacious girl from the Rhineland, began to hum an American folk song she had heard on the guards’ radio, her feet tapping against the wooden floorboards of the barracks.
Then, there was Hilda Schwarz. Hilda was an older woman, a former senior communications officer who had maintained a rigid, military discipline since the day of her capture. She rarely spoke, never complained, and kept her uniform meticulously brushed. As the women worked on their pumpkins in the central yard, the guards turned up a phonograph, playing a lively, rhythmic American melody.
Hilda stood up from her bench. She walked into the center of the yard, straightened her spine, and suddenly began to perform a traditional, intricate German folk dance from her native Black Forest region. Her movements were disciplined, exceptionally graceful, and filled with a fierce, unmistakable pride. The yard went silent. The American guards stopped talking; the prisoners paused their carving. Hilda was not dancing for her captors, nor was she dancing to entertain her peers. She was asserting her identity in the middle of a prison camp, refusing to let her spirit be entirely broken by the geography of her confinement. When she finished, she offered a sharp, dignified nod and returned to her pumpkin, leaving a profound impression on everyone who witnessed it.
The climax of the week arrived on the night of Halloween. The twilight faded into a crisp, moonlit night. The guards had arranged the dozens of carved pumpkins along the perimeter fences, on the steps of the barracks, and around the central square of the camp. Inside each one, Private Mueller and the other soldiers had placed a short wax candle.
When the candles were lit, the transformation of Camp Green Lake was instantaneous and absolute. The harsh, functional lines of the barracks and the barbed wire fence dissolved into a warm, flickering tapestry of dancing shadows. The prison yard was completely changed into a fairy-tale scene. The air was thick with the rich, nostalgic scent of melting wax, burnt pumpkin skin, and dry autumn leaves.
Sophie let out a genuine laugh of pure delight, her eyes reflecting the hundreds of tiny, glowing fires. Elsa stood beside Marlene, staring at the display. The flickering faces—some monstrous, some comical, some beautifully serene like her own—seemed to bridge the immense chasm that separated the people in the yard. They were no longer just guards and prisoners, victors and vanquished. They were human beings standing in the dark, seeking warmth and light against the oncoming winter.
Private Mueller appeared from the mess hall carrying a large, steaming metal canister. He began pouring hot apple cider into tin mugs, handing them to the women along with small cookies shaped like bats and ghosts that the broad-shouldered cook had baked especially for the occasion.
“For you, Elsa,” Mueller said, handing her a mug.
“Thank you, Private,” Elsa said, her fingers warming against the metal. She looked into his eyes and saw a reflection of her own internal conflict—the recognition that they were both caught in a historical current far larger than themselves, trying their best to cling to small fragments of decency.
Throughout the evening, music drifted across the glowing yard. A guard produced a harmonica, playing a slow, melancholic American spiritual. In response, a group of the German women began to sing a soft, soaring lullaby from their childhood. It wasn’t an act of defiance, but an exchange—a sharing of cultural grief and hope that cut through years of wartime propaganda and national hatred. Elsa stayed awake long after the others had returned to their bunks, watching the candles slowly burn down to their wicks through the window, her mind suspended between the guilt of her past and a fragile, unexpected hope for the future.
IV. The Fractured Peace
The illusion of isolation could not last forever. Even as they carved pumpkins and drank cider, the real world was rushing toward its violent conclusion. By the spring of 1945, the news filtering into the camp through the American newspapers and radio broadcasts grew increasingly grim.
The German frontlines had not merely receded; they had utterly disintegrated. The Red Army was pressing from the east, the Americans and British from the west. The Reich was being squeezed out of existence. The women gathered around the camp’s bulletin board each morning, staring at the maps the guards posted, watching the black ink of Allied territory swallow the names of their hometowns.
In April, Elsa finally received a letter from her parents, forwarded through the international Red Cross. The envelope was battered, stamped with multiple military censors, and smelled of dust and damp. She opened it with trembling fingers as Marlene and Greta watched in silence.
My dearest Elsa, the letter read, written in her mother’s cramped, elegant script.
We thank God every day that you are alive and safe in America. Do not worry for us, my child, though the world here has changed beyond recognition. The bombings in Hamburg have left our neighborhood in ruins. The old university library where you studied is gone—nothing but a hollow shell of blackened stone. We spend most of our nights in the cellars. Food is very scarce, and your father’s health is failing, but we endure. We pray for the end of this madness, and we pray for the day we can see your face again. Stay strong. Do your duty, whatever it may be.
Elsa crushed the letter against her chest, tears blurring her vision. The contrast was too painful to bear. Her parents were starving in the ruins of Hamburg, while she was gaining weight on American rations, living in a clean barracks, and receiving small kindnesses from her guards. The guilt she had carried since her capture hardened into a heavy, permanent knot in her stomach. She felt like a deserter, a traitor to her family’s suffering because she had the misfortune of being safe.
By late April 1945, the atmosphere at Camp Green Lake grew incredibly tense, yet electric with anticipation. The radio in the guards’ shack blared constantly. Everyone knew the end was a matter of days, if not hours.
One rainy afternoon, the camp commander summoned all thirty-seven women to the mess hall. He stood before them, a tall, graying man with a deeply serious expression.
“The war in Europe is effectively over,” the commander said without triumph. “The German military forces are surrendering unconditionally. The formal announcement will come within days.”
A collective gasp echoed through the room. Some women began to weep silently; others stared blankly ahead, numb with the shock of a reality they had known was coming but could not fully comprehend.
“The United States government is beginning preparations for your future,” the commander continued. “Under the terms of our current policy, you will have choices to make in the coming months. Some of you may apply for immediate repatriation to Germany as soon as transport becomes available. Others, due to special skills, sponsorships, or the total destruction of their home regions, may be eligible to apply for civilian immigration status to remain here in the United States. Think about it carefully. Discuss it among yourselves. Your decisions will be deeply personal.”
That evening, the barracks erupted into a feverish, late-night debate. The women were forced to confront the terrifying reality of a world without the war that had defined their entire adult lives.
Greta Lindemann sat on her bunk, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. “I am not going back,” she said, her voice flat, devoid of its usual sharp edge. “A Red Cross report came in last week. My hometown in Bavaria was completely obliterated. My parents, my younger brother… they are all gone. There is nothing left for me there but graves and ash. Why should I return to a graveyard when there is a future here?”
Marlene looked up from her canvas bag, her eyes red from crying. “I must go back, Greta. My parents are alive in Stuttgart. Their bakery is ruined, but they are old and they are alone. If I stay here, enjoying the comforts of this country while they dig through the rubble with their bare hands, I will never be able to look at my own reflection again. I have to help them rebuild.”
Freda, a quiet woman who had worked as a field nurse before being attached to their communications unit, nodded in agreement with Marlene. “My place is there as well. Germany will need nurses. It will need anyone who knows how to heal. It is a moral duty to go back and help mend the wounds we helped inflict.”
Elsa sat on the edge of her bunk, listening to her friends tear themselves apart between the opposing forces of duty, love, guilt, and hope. She felt entirely divided. She loved her parents with every fiber of her being, yet the thought of returning to a ruined Germany, to a society that would be defined by decades of poverty, recrimination, and foreign occupation, filled her with a paralyzing dread. She looked out the window at the quiet Wisconsin woods, thinking of the schoolhouse she had dreamed of running, the books she wanted to teach. Could she ever find that life in the ashes of Hamburg?
V. The Long Horizon
On May 8, 1945, the formal announcement of Victory in Europe—V-E Day—was broadcast to the world. At Camp Green Lake, there were no wild celebrations, no jubilant shouting matches. The guards were quiet, relieved that their brothers and friends would stop dying in the European theater, but respectful of the profound grief that hung over the prisoners. The women were officially released from their status as enemy prisoners of war, transitioning into a strange, bureaucratic limbo as their paperwork was processed.
The goodbyes, when they came several months later as the repatriation ships began to clear, were deeply poignant. Freda, true to her word, packed her few belongings, her face set with a grim, noble determination to return to the hospitals of a shattered Berlin. Marlene Vogel clung to Elsa on the camp’s gravel driveway, both women weeping openly.
“Find your peace, Elsa,” Marlene whispered, slipping the faded photograph of her parents’ Stuttgart bakery into Elsa’s hand. “Remember us. Do not let them forget what happened here.”
“I will never forget you, Marlene,” Elsa said, holding her tightly. “Write to me. As soon as there is a postal service, write to me.”
While Marlene, Freda, and nineteen others boarded the trucks heading back toward the Atlantic ports, Elsa, Greta, and fifteen others remained behind. Elsa’s decision had been the most difficult of her life. She had written a long, agonizing letter to her sister Elise, who had survived the war in a rural village near the Danish border, promising to send a portion of every dollar she earned back to Germany to support her parents. She chose to stay in America not out of a desire to escape her guilt, but because she realized that her purpose had shifted. She could do more to help her family, and perhaps more to contribute to the ultimate reconciliation of their two nations, by building a life of value in this new world.
VI. The Return to Green Lake
Twenty years passed with the relentless, smoothing velocity of a deep river. It was October 1965. The old wooden barracks of Camp Green Lake were no longer surrounded by barbed wire; the fences had long since been torn down, and the site had been converted into a peaceful county community center surrounded by manicured lawns and playground equipment for children.
Elsa Hartman—now Elsa Miller—stood in the parking lot of the center, watching the autumn leaves drift across the asphalt. She was forty-one years old, her hair touched with elegant streaks of silver at the temples, wearing a stylish wool coat. Beside her stood her husband, David, an American high school history teacher she had met while attending university in Chicago, and their two teenage daughters, Ruth and Clara.
“Is this the place, Mom?” Ruth asked, looking at the long, low wooden buildings that had been preserved and painted a cheerful colonial white.
“Yes, liebling,” Elsa said, her voice carrying only the faintest, melodic trace of a German accent. “This is where it began. The second part of my life.”
They walked into the main hall, which had once served as the camp mess hall. Inside, a large banner hung from the rafters: Camp Green Lake POW Reunion — 1945–1965.
The room was filled with the warm hum of conversation, the clinking of glasses, and the emotional cries of recognition. Elsa felt a sudden, dizzying rush of time collapsing on itself. She looked across the room and saw Greta Lindemann, now a successful accountant living in Milwaukee, surrounded by a handsome family of her own. Greta caught her eye and waved, a bright, unburdened smile replacing the stony, defensive expression Elsa had known during the war.
And then, standing near the old cast-iron stoves, Elsa saw a familiar figure. It was Freda, who had traveled all the way from Hamburg for the reunion. Her face was lined with the hardships of the post-war reconstruction years, her hands worn from decades of hospital work, but her eyes were incredibly bright, filled with a deep, serene wisdom. Elsa ran across the room, and the two women embraced with a fierce, desperate intensity that spoke of shared survival.
“Marlene sends her love,” Freda said into Elsa’s ear as they finally stepped back. “She couldn’t make the journey—the bakery is thriving now, her children are taking it over—but she told me to give you this.” Freda reached into her purse and produced a small, beautifully wrapped package of traditional German gingerbread cookies.
They sat together at one of the long tables, sharing photographs, stories of their children, and memories of the dark years that had shaped their lives. They spoke of the terror of their capture, the disorientation of their arrival, and the long, slow process of learning to trust a former enemy. They acknowledged, without bitterness, how the crucible of Camp Green Lake had fundamentally altered their understanding of humanity.
As the afternoon began to wind down, a group of elderly men stepped forward from the kitchen galley. Among them was a man with a thick shock of white hair and a face lined with a lifetime of farming—Private Mueller, now long retired. He and the other former guards were wheeling a large, silver cart into the center of the room.
On top of the cart sat several massive tubs of rich, creamy vanilla and chocolate ice cream.
A collective hush fell over the room, followed by a soft, emotional wave of laughter from the women. The gathering culminated in this single, deeply symbolic act. Mueller began scooping the ice cream into glass bowls, handing them to the women he had once guarded.
Elsa took her bowl, her fingers steady against the glass. She looked down at the pale, frozen treat. It was the exact same luxury that had seemed so utterly impossible to a terrified twenty-one-year-old girl in the winter of 1944.
She lifted a spoonful to her lips and tasted it. The ice cream was sweet, cold, and rich. As she swallowed, she looked around the room—at her American husband, her daughters, her German friends, and her former captors. She realized that despite the horrors, the betrayals, and the immense destruction of the war they had all lived through, moments of profound kindness, beauty, and hope could prevail. Their survival was not a betrayal of the past, but a testament to it. They had survived the winter, and the ice cream was finally theirs to enjoy.
