Arkansas' Mercí Car

Arkansas' Merci Car recalls American aid to France during two world wars and France's gratitude in return. In 1947, the people of the United States sent seven hundred boxcars of food, medicine, fuel and clothing to a France devastated by years of Nazi occupation in a grassroots effort called the Friendship Train that received no government support. In 1949, the people of France answered with a Merci Train, or Gratitude Train, of forty-nine gift-filled boxcars decorated with shields representing the provinces of France. Shipped to New York, the boxcars were placed on flatcars, with one assigned to each state and one shared by Hawaii and the District of Columbia. The flatcar carrying the Arkansas car for Little Rock arrived early on February 13, 1949, and crowds came to see its gifts, first displayed at the Rock Island Freight Depot and later in the capitol rotunda. After touring the state, the car went to the Shumaker Naval Ordnance Depot in Camden, and in January 1961 it was moved to Helena, home of the then-department commander of the American Legion in Arkansas. The gifts it carried are now in the collections of several museums and state universities. The train's antique wooden boxcars, built between 1875 and 1882, were the "Forty and Eights" used in World War I and World War II to carry men and horses, named for their capacity of forty men or eight horses, and many French and American veterans remembered enduring days in them with no seats, windows or toilets and barely enough room to sit or sleep.

Helena-West Helena, Arkansas · United States