by Stuart Childs
I remember lying in bed that night, praying. Just praying that at least if the battle was lost, I wouldn’t serve a detention for food outside of the cafe.
Our Sergeant came to wake us up at 0430 for mission briefing and final commands. No one had slept. The lucky ones were to be stationed in the back, long after my company had taken out the ice cream launchers and forward defenses.
Dawn’s rose colored fingers came menacingly slowly.
When I stood and took in the cool morning for what I thought would be the last time, I knew that we were going to be part of something great that day. We stood in the hangar, faces painted in camouflage, and awaited the commands we had been read a hundred times before.
“Your mission, Alpha company, is to take the café, seize the cookie stash, and locate the whereabouts of Bob Wise, Dunkel, and any of their known conspirators. Your job is to dirty their shirts and force them to allow food anywhere in school.”
No cheers on this day, no last HURRAH from the men before this battle. We poured out and across the football field like the thick fog that surrounded us. Silent shapes shifting in the dark.
My company was to be the first to crash onto the Williams Plaza and into the Café, flanking around the attendance office. In the days before, the 101st airborne flew over four-hundred bombing campaigns dropping over two hundred tons of cookie dough and unleashing the infamous smore bombs on the outer reaches of the café. The devastation provided the the perfect opportunity for the massive ground attack that was just moments away.
At that moment a giant smore bomb came streaking through the rose colored sky, the signal for the attack. A melee of ice cream and brownies bombarded us on all sides as I was handed a twix shooter and my partner was given extra munitions. Bob was ordered to take my gun if I went down.
The first wave crashed upon the walls of the café. I dug into a marshmallow bunker and gritted my teeth. “Bring it on you cowards! I will not tuck my shirt in!” Cries emerged from all around as my cheer was heralded. We burst through the glass of the café to find the enemy bunkered behind the cash registers.
“WHIP CREAM GRENADE!” we shouted as the enemy lobbed their weapons with deadly accuracy, fear gripping all of our hearts. The Villainous Dunkel could be heard yelling midst cackling laughs “Pick up your trash!”
Charlie and Bravo companies came streaking in, pouring out of Suburbans, tailgaits open, President Hudson Vincent commands echoing through their minds: “Win at all costs! No retreat! No surrender!”
I dove out of the way as a giant Reese’s came out of nowhere and took out a man behind me. A valiant sacrifice. No tide-to-go could remove that stain.
When the marshallow fluff settled the outcome was clear. Bob Wise had fled his beloved café and the administration had clearly followed his lead, as Dunkel’s legendary golden handled ice-cream shooter lay forgotten amidst the rubble. It was a valiant day where the thrill of huge victory and the loss of clean clothing was experienced on both sides.
It was a day that will forever live on in the memory of the upper School as wave upon wave of our greatest generation crashed upon the glass of the café and demanded freedom from the candy oppressors. August 25, 2008 – a day that will forever be remembered as D-Day. Or at least the first of many, many D-Days.
