Grostenquin France

Memories of the Original Trailers - Grant Armstrong

We heard of a company in England that would ship trailers to Metz France and the Air Force agreed to tow them to the station and place them on a couple of aircraft dispersal buttons. I arranged for a trailer to be on site at Grostenquin and flew home commercially in December 1952. I returned to France with my wife and son in an Air Canada North Star. We landed in London as France was covered in a dense fog. Air Canada put those booked for France in a hotel for the night. The next morning we were sent to Dover and put on a ferry to France then by rail to Paris. We ended up in the huge station in Paris. Sitting at the next table was a German family with two children about 9 and 10. All had a mug of beer with their breakfast. We ordered what we could from a French Menu and felt full. We had a couple of hours wait for a train to Metz where an Air Force bus met each train.

The bus took us to Faulquemont, a small town about 5 miles from the station. We were met by a Catholic Padre and were told that we would have to stay in a hotel in Faulquemont until the trailers were set up. There were three or four other couples in the same predicament. The RCAF provided a bus to pick up the service personnel every morning and they brought us back to Faulquemont at the end of the day. The women spent the days shopping and visiting among themselves. Msre Lett was the hotel manager and he became a good friend with his Canadian tenants.

I recall that I ordered a bottle of wine for dinner on our first night at Faulquemont, but we only drank a bit of it. He took it and we understood that the next night all we had to do was give the waiter our name when we ordered. Shortly after our wine arrived on the table. This seemed to be the general practice as we saw other tables with part bottles on the tables.

About a week later I saw our trailer on site and we moved in.

I had initially arranged to stay in France for just one year. With this in mind, our move back to Canada was due around early November of 1953. I and one of our neighbor friends, Stan and Ellen Halliday, arranged to return to Canada on the Queen Mary and plans were made accordingly. Near the first of November, Air Movements called and said that if we didn’t mind riding in an RAF Box Car there was a North Star going back to Canada empty the following week and we could get on it. We jumped at the chance as it would save a lot of money. We canceled our ship reservations. I had to sell my car and Trailer and a young couple on the station bought both. We had a one day wait because of weather, and then we proceeded to North Luffenham on the Box Car. We had a two day wait before flying back to Montreal where we caught a train to Trenton. I had been transferred to 6 Repair Depot in Trenton about a mile north of the main station.