Frozen

Carter shuddered and uttered a small moan. "Brain freeze," he croaked. He put down his milkshake.

"A what?" asked Newkirk. The last thing he wanted to eat was a fortified shake; but the medical staff at the embarkation center watched their food intake closely. Most of the liberated POWs were malnourished

"I get it when I eat something really cold. I don't think anyone knows what causes it," Carter replied.

Newkirk stared at his shake. "Small price to pay. Especially for the blokes on those forced marches. Cheers." Seeing what happened to Carter, Newkirk was careful and took small sips.


a/n: got this written up quickly this morning. For more information on liberated POWs and the embarkation center at LeHavre, please see my story, "RAMPS," or the research notes in the forums.

sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia-the scientific term for the phenomenon; I also found this on wikipedia: "The term ice-cream headache has been in use since at least January 31, 1937, contained in a journal entry by Rebecca Timbres published in the 1939 book We Didn't Ask Utopia: A Quaker Family in Soviet Russia. The first published use of the term brain freeze, in the sense of a cold-stimulus headache, was in 1991." So Carter was a bit ahead of his time!