Americans filled a 700-boxcar train with food for war-torn France in 1947. It came entirely from ordinary citizens, not the government. France answered two years later with 49 boxcars of its own, one for every state. Six million French and Italian donors packed them with 52,000 gifts. Air Force jets and fireboats greeted it in New York Harbor. Most of those boxcars are still around today, kept in museums nationwide.
