I may be one of the remaining few who inaugurated Toul as an airbase (?) in July of 1952, the new 1st Tac Recon, flying RB-26's. We were housed in TENTs...there were no quarters, for anyone, officer or enlisted. The officer tents housed 12 bodies, but we had "maid service" from a young French girl, resident of Rossiere en Hay. She swept the floor (?), took out the beer cans, tidied up the cots...general cleaning. We had running water for about a month, then "finis". We did have a finished "bath house and latrine", which, of course was out of commission, with no water. A jeep, pulling a water trailer, made the rounds, each day...never at the same time, to give us our ration of one canteen, which we used for shaving and brushing our teeth. The latrines were, of course, also out of commission so we had "out houses"...separate facilities for the nurses. Once a week several of us would get into a car and go to Nancy, rent a hotel, where we could luxuriate in a hot bath.

As a bachelor pilot, I had it good, because I was permitted to take numerous cross countries to where ever looked for the weekend. There were little or no air field facilities...the tower was a truck, but we did have a fire truck and an ambulance. The runway was PSP...for those "youngsters" who do not know what PSP is...the name is from a person named Steele who had invented the steel sections, for connecting together to form a roadway or in our case a runway...8,000 feet long. When wet they provided the opportunity to show your short field (you didn't know how far you might slide) landing techniques !! Our tales of being based at Toul Rossiere during those days could lead to more paragraphs, or even, pages, but there is no point in incursing into those B-66 crews that served there ten years later...those are the real heroes !!! My hat is off to them. Fortunately, we were "rescued" from Toul and moved to Spangdahlem, where later we upgraded to RB-57's... the Canberra, which was a very good aircraft and served us well for the missions we flew. Enough !! I just wanted to make a few comments about "pioneering" Toul Rossierre. Best regards to all.