Chinon Hospital-Depot

Welcome to our Chinon web site!

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Early in the 1950s a convoy of US Army personal came down from Germany. They put up tents and made camp in an area along the main road from Chinon to Tours.
At a railhead nearby train loads of supplies were waiting to be stored. With no time to build Hardstands they cleared places in the woods to place the items. Later as time
permitted paved Hardstands were built and miles of pipeline equipment was cleaned and restacked. Tons of spare parts, hundreds of Buldozers and other construction equipment were checked and preserved.
Buildings were constructed. Barracks were made for troop
housing. by 1956 most of the operations were in the Depot
and prefab area, the "Old area" along the highway was abdoned, used for the annual "Tent City" exercise when
convoys came in and were offered food and shelter in a
dependant evacuation test
During this time a new Thousand bed Hospital was being
built a few miles toward Chinon. Upon it's completion some
permantly assigned outfits were billeted there, with the understanding that in time of war, no combat troops were to
be billeted there.
This site is comitted to refreshing and preserving memories of the times spent at APO 256 Chinon.
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Photos of those Fageol Busses found the same day we ask for them. A GI that drove them while stationed at Chinon has rare photos of those Army Busses. Those Bus Drivers were fast.

Our sincere thanks to James LePant.

Hubert Nadeau has shared more Bussac Photos with us, We thank him. Send him a Thank You in the Guest Book.

New !! HISTOIRE DES BASES AMERICAINES
http://jeanpierre.mercier33.free.fr/camps_americains/index.html

Hubert Nadeau from Maine, USA Has sent us a nice collection of photos that he took while stationed at Bussac. We have a page for these fine photos. See Bussac 319th.

Whats a tank retriever doing in Chinon? See the story on the 7743 Page.
7743 STORAGE COMPANY PAGE Many extra nice photos.

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!! CHINON PHOTOS !!
Below is my website of our July 2nd visit to the Depot area and Hospital. It can be viewed as a slide show or by clicking "detail" for individual photos with descriptions.

Yahoo is discontinuing support of Yahoo! Photos in September. They are replacing it with "flickr"

http://www.flickr.com/gp/10009308@N02/2q43J6

special Thanks to Phil Pittman

Oak Park, Illinos

Chinon Depot (Finance Office) 1960-62

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MR.Jacques Rabine Hosts part of the Chinon.com website

Go to www.chinon.com

Click on the British Flag next to the "Office of Tourism"

Click on Discover

in the left column click on 1951-1967 the American years.

click on the PDF red icon Adobe.

This takes a while to load so be patient.

See photos of the old Depot and some really nice photos of the Hospital area.

Here is his E-Mail letter. NOTE: The English version is ready now. Dear " Old Chinoners",

I have update the site of www.chinon.com concerning the "Camp américain" and the "1000 bed Hospital", with photos ad short comments. For the moment translation in english is not ready, but it should be O.K before the end of July.

The way to reach the site (in french) after connecting the big yellow arrow, is to use the pdf possibility. I hope that you will be interested, but don't be sad when seeing how are the places where you spent a part of your youth. Such is life.

LINKS

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U.S. ARMY ORLEANS, FRANCE http://www.webspawner.com/users/maisonfort

Try this real nice website 202 MP unit.

Be sure to click on the black arm band and read "Stories"

http://www.pbase.com/202mpco/france___cold_war

http://www.pbase.com/202mpco/image/39926081

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US Army Communciations Zone, Europe

http://www.usarmygermany.com/Units/ComZ/USAREUR_ComZone.htm

Chinon Office of Tourism

www.chinon.com

Tim's Chinon Website

http://www.chinonfrance.com

U.S. ARMY ORLEANS, FRANCE

http://www.webspawner.com/users/maisonfort

Visit SAUMUR SIGNAL DEPOT website

http://www.egroelle.net./

Its Fantastic !!

Click On Photo to see more Oradour photos.

When we were stationed at Chinon, A "Must See" was Oradour sur Glane. One week end Jean and I drove over and had a look for ourselves. This was 1956 or 57. We had a new 1956 4CV Renault it was during that time. This turned out to be an awsome experience for a couple Michigan kids, This was our first time to see the results of what people will do to each other and still call themselves "humans" . I took thirty some photos that day, Those old colored slides are still in
fair shape.

Larry Coppala Sent This nice photo He took in 1965 from the

road out front. See his message in the Guest Book.

We thank him for sharing this with us.