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Incirlik AB on 26 December 1990 before official approval for the operation had
been given by the TGS.  The advance team was comprised of Colonel Best;
Captain Robert O'Malley; Senior Master Sergeant's John Wilkins and Douglas
Deeter; Master Sergeant Wayne Anderson; Technical Sergeants Albert Colangelo;
Ronald Fajfar; Kevin Fraher; Kevin Lawson; Vincent Salas; William Shrum; and
Davie Targett;  Staff Sergeant Richard Carney; Sergeants Jeffrey Heath and
William Sundstrom; and Airmen First Class James Smith and Thomas Speigal.
This select group of experienced people would carry out the critical first
phase of the buildup to support PROVEN FORCE forces in the Turkish theater of
operations.

Operating to the legal limit within the constraints established by the Turkish
government, which forbid them to begin the actual construction of a tent city,
Colonel Best and his people ordered lumber and other supplies and began
pre-assembling tent floors and other components in an abandoned vehicle
maintenance building.  They also completed soil stabilization work that would
later benefit the tent city erected on the site.  Their planning paid off once
the TGS approved the JTF.  As soon as permission was received, Colonel Best
and the 377 CEG (Deployed) Prime BEEF team jumped on the task of building the
tent city.  In addition to approval for the tent city, TGS approval opened the
floodgates for more units and support personnel to deploy.  The Incirlik base
population eventually swelled by some 350 percent, totaling over 5,000
temporary duty (TDY) personnel at its peak.  As the base began overflowing
with people, Colonel Best's Prime BEEF engineers were building tents as fast
as they could, keeping up with the demand.  As a result of their advance
planning, by the end of 17 January they had completed 54 tents with wooden
floors, enough to shelter 540 people, in just under 24 hours.

With the green light form the TGS, the bulk of the remaining engineers were
deployed forward on 16 January to join the advance team.  With only five hours
notice, these 81 engineers, led by Captain Larry Peplinski and Chief Master
Sergeant Delbert Jackson, loaded their pallets of gear and were in flight to
Incirlik AB.  The extra manpower greatly helped in the construction of the 
remaining 200 tents, latrines, showers and laundry facilities.  An additional
30 engineers from Hahn AB, along with 12 more people from other USAFE bases,
were deployed to round out the civil engineering group.

The several thousand TDY troops sent to Incirlik AB and the many-fold increase
in associated support actions tasked Colonel Best's Prime BEEF teams to their
limits, but they responded with extra effort that saved the day.  When the
initial flow of aircraft and support personnel was arriving faster than tents
could be erected, they were temporarily billeted at base Morale, Welfare and
Recreation (MWR)  facilities, and military family housing (MFH) units scheduled
for renovation were reopened for use.  But in a matter of days, a 2,500-person
tent city stood at Incirlik AB, which soon became known as "Tornado Town"
Tent cities include not only tents, but all the ancillary support facilities
as well.  Among the essential facilities at Incirlik were field kitchens
capable of feeding the thousands of people already present and those to come, as
well as showers, sinks, latrines and other necessary facilities.

On 18 January, with "Tornado Town" about half-way completed, Captain O'Malley
and Sergeant Wilkins deployed forward with a team of 12 engineers to begin
site preparation for a tent city at Batman FOL to support the initial beddown

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