Ice Cream Truck

[Hawken]

I heard somewhere that an Ice Cream truck was selling its wares to service men on the English coast prior to the D-day invasion. It got caught up in the confusion and traffic and was actually loaded, and subsequently landed on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. Fact or Fiction? Proof in any direction?

[vicars]

Fiction - if true a story like this would have hit the headlines long ago and be much more widely known.

[Catso]

Right, so in the middle of rationing etc, someone was selling ice cream?

There's probably more fat in an ice cream than the weekly butter ration.

[Octavius]

Because of the rationing, vans selling ice cream became defunct. However, because of the refrigerants in an ice cream van they were in some instances used to carry blood for blood transfusions to the soldiers needing medical attention.

It is possible that an ice cream van would have been used during the war for this purpose, but as for any factual evidence of one being used for the D-day landings I think you might be hard-pressed to find anything as it wouldn't have been considered that unusual.

[Mikeyd2]

No van but out of interest.....

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/storie s/28.htm

[JillP]

I have heard something about that, but I can't remember where. It seems that the ice cream man, when he got over to France, sold ice cream to both sides, thus doubling his sales.