DAD'S ICE-CREAM BOWL

“For him, the bowl had held the taste of freedom.”

My husband once tried to scoop chili into this bowl and put it in the microwave. In my panic to stop him, I nearly knocked the bowl to the floor. I bathed it, gently dried it, then clutched it under my sweater, all the while repeating “sorry, so sorry.” I was apologizing to the little melamine dish but also to my late father. For him, the bowl had held the taste of freedom.

In World War II, Dad was a lieutenant in the 100th Bomb Group, flying from a base in England over the North Sea to bomb targets in Germany and France. On July 25, 1943, he was on his eighth mission when the B-17 he was co-piloting, Duration + 6, crash-landed in the sea. Six members of the 10-man crew died. Dad and the three other survivors were rescued by heroic Danish fishermen, but Denmark was under Nazi occupation, and when they got to port, German soldiers took the Americans prisoner.

He was a POW for nearly two years, and for nearly two years he was hungry all the time. Ice cream was one of the foods he most craved.

The POW camp was liberated by General Patton’s Army on April 29, 1945, and the former prisoners were moved to a transition camp in France. Dad had lost 35 pounds. His intestines couldn’t handle anything rich—certainly not ice cream. That would have to wait until he got back to America. He arrived on June 15, 1945, called my mom at 3 a.m. to ask her to marry him and later that day had a steak and, at last, his special treat.

I have vivid memories of eating ice cream with him on Sunday afternoons. He never wanted a cone. He’d give me a dollar and send me next door to Helen’s Grocery Store for a hand-packed pint of chocolate or coffee, and then he’d serve himself in one of these little black bowls. We had a set of four, and maybe they were part of the celebration; the speckles do look like confetti. The bowls were durable and fun, just like Dad. He would carry his to the couch as if it held diamonds.

After the war he’d wanted to stay in the Army Air Corps as a full-time flight instructor, but as a POW he’d missed so much flight time, and the Corps had its pick of airmen with more. He accepted the disappointment, joined the family funeral home instead and whistled while he worked, even while embalming. He played cards with his buddies from the cemetery and was the king of backyard parties. At Christmas, he got the biggest tree he could find and tossed on silver tinsel by the boxful. At night, rather than tell bedtime stories, he’d sit at the piano and sing. Every night, he lifted us to the ceiling and told us to touch the sky.

When Dad died, in 1975, my mom saved his POW journal for me, and several years ago the son of one of the Danish fishermen gave me one of two maps my father had given his: detailed escape maps American airmen were issued in case they were shot down over enemy territory, made of silk so they wouldn’t rustle and give the soldier away. I treasure both these artifacts, but it’s the little black ice cream bowl—the lone survivor of the set—I treasure most. It time-travels me back to happy days with my beaming father, who never got over the amazing good fortune of being alive to share something delicious with the people he loved.

—Linda Styles Berkery

My father, William Styles, June 1945, shortly after returning from the war.

Pilot Richard Carey (left) and my co-pilot dad aboard Bertha, the Danish fishing boat that rescued them from the North Sea, July 25, 1943.

The silk map that came back to me.

Dad on leave, 1942, before he was sent overseas. This is the way I always think of him: smiling. Not sure how he maintained that big smile after the war, but he did.

Dad and his girls, 1957. I’m next to my mom.

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Linda Berkery is the author of the memoir Reflections: A Wardrobe of Life Lessons. She writes about faith/life and her father's experiences in WWII and recently launched a Substack newsletter, Linda’s Reflections.

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