Word: box
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...freight-handlers at Frankfurt Rhein-Main airport, it was just another box-a little on the heavy side, to be sure, but nothing out of the ordinary. They heaved it onto a hand-truck and dumped it in the storeroom. Shortly after midnight, strange things began to happen. A freight-handler saw the box move. Its lid lifted slowly and startled eyes glinted in the gloom. American Overseas Airlines Official William Waring investigated. "I opened the box," he told reporters later, "and saw a pair of eyes and some hair. Then she stepped out-no shirt...
With the help of a girl friend named Sigrid Kraft, who also had a fiancé in the U.S., Gitte procured a packing box 29 inches long by 21 inches deep. She bored some air holes in it, equipped it with inside latches, stocked it with sleeping pills, four slices of black bread, a jar of tea and some razor blades (to slash her wrists in case the worst came to the worst). Then Sigrid sent for Private Robert Siedentopf, a friendly G.I. who worked in the same Army dispensary as Gitte...
...Angel. Gitte, Sigrid told Robert, was very anxious to ship a crate full of "fragile personal belongings" to her fiancé in Manhattan. Would Robert be an angel and take it to the airport for her? Carefully Robert set the box on a jeep and pocketed a cablegram written out by Sigrid: "Send $150 immediately and you will see me soon. Gitte." But the cable office would not send it unless Siedentopf signed it with his own name...
...Private, Siedentopf and his fragile burden waited in vain while airport officials waved a bill for $130 freight charges. "Can't I send it C.O.D.?" asked the G.I. The answer was no. "Oh, well, then just store it. I'll be back." Into the storeroom went the box. After an uncomfortable 24 hours, restless Gitte, clad in bra and pants, found herself face to face with the dumbfounded airline official. "It was hot in there," she said simply...
...when someone told him that Gitte would almost certainly have frozen to death in the unheated freight compartment of a Stratoliner. Sighed an airline official in Frankfurt: "Just say that I'd like to have some woman love me enough to fly to New York in that little box...