Among the memorabilia dating back to the Revolutionary War on display at the U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum in Huntsville is an 1879 French train boxcar, the first artifact that was brought into the building before it opened on Veterans Day in 2001.
The wooden structure on a steel frame is one of 49 boxcars, the Train de la Reconnaissance, called the Merci Train, given by the French to the United States in appreciation of the more than 700 American boxcars of relief goods sent to the country in 1948, according to mercitrain.org.
American Soldiers were transported to the front in World War I on the French rail system, and the boxcars were stenciled with “40 Hommes/8 Chevaux,” denoting their capacity to hold either 40 men or eight horses.
The Merci Train arrived in New York harbor in early 1949 and each of the 48 U.S. states at that time received a boxcar, which were filled with gifts, with the 49th boxcar shared by Washington, D.C. and the territory of Hawaii.
Since arriving in Montgomery in February 1949 and accepted by then-Alabama Gov. Jim Folsom, the “40&8” boxcar had quite a journey before reaching its permanent home at the military museum some 50 years later.
“I’m amazed at the interest that it has, and I’m grateful,” retired Lt. Col. Randy Withrow, the museum’s director, said. “It’s something that we thought would be a monumental representative, in our case, for World War I, but if you look at the big picture also for World War II because they continued to use the cars.”
“We only have approximately 43 left, some have been destroyed,” said John Schnatz, a five-time Chef de Gare for the Grande Du Alabama, that is, the state commander of the La Societe des Quante Hommes et Huit Chevaux (The Society of Forty Men and Eight Horses).
The independent, invitation-only, charitable honor society of American veterans and service members, commonly known as The Forty & Eight, was founded in 1920 by American veterans returning from France and was originally an arm of the American Legion.
“As far as we know, we have the only boxcar housed within a veterans museum.” Schnatz said. A 40&8 member for 41 years who has seen 32 of the boxcars, he is the historian for the Alabama 40&8.
40&8 members from across the state met in Huntsville last weekend and, as part of the event, presented $250 to the museum toward the maintenance of the boxcar. The organization makes an annual donation.
“I want to thank all you guys for your support,” Withrow said.
Schnatz said that a member of the local chapter Voiture 1012 discovered the boxcar just by chance in 1984 – being used as a promotional billboard at Cathedral Caverns in Grant.
“One of the 40&8ers was driving by and happened to see it,” Schnatz said. “They decided they were going to save it and they started restoration on the boxcar” at the Huntsville Depot Museum. “It took four years to bring it back to life.”
In 1988, the boxcar was rededicated in a ceremony at the downtown museum.
The boxcar was outside on the museum grounds, and “the 40&8 elders asked us if we would put it inside (the U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum) when we did get the building,” Withrow said. “It had been restored and it would continue to deteriorate if it was outside.”
At the museum, visitors can walk around inside the boxcar, which holds a World War I display, and there’s a spot at the top of the steps to get a panoramic photo op of the interior of the museum.
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