Messages in a bottle from WWI soldiers found on Australian coast
Messages in a bottle written by two Australian soldiers in 1916 were found more than a century later on the southwestern coast of the country.
The cheerful notes were penned just days before their journey to join France’s battlefields during the First World War.
One of the soldiers, Pte Malcolm Neville, told his mother that the food on board was “really good” and that they were “as happy as Larry”. He was killed in action months later, at the age of 28. The other soldier, 37-year-old Pte William Harley, survived the war and returned home.
The letters were passed on to his grandchildren, who were stunned by the discovery.
The bottle was found by local resident Deb Brown and her family at remote Wharton Beach near Esperance, Western Australia, earlier this month.
She said on Tuesday, during one of her regular quad bike trips to clean up trash, she and her husband and daughter spotted a thick glass bottle on the beach.
“We do a lot of cleaning on our beaches and so we don’t pass a single piece of trash. So this little bottle was there waiting to be picked up,” Ms Brown told the Associated Press news agency.
Both letters were readable, although the paper was wet, so Mrs. Brown began tracking down the soldiers’ families to deliver them.
Since her mother’s address was also included in the note, Ms Brown searched online for the soldier’s name and city of origin and found Pte Neville’s great-nephew, Herbie Neville.
Mr Neville told ABC News the experience was “incredible” for his family, especially Pte Neville’s niece Marian Davies, 101, who remembers her uncle leaving to go to war and never returning.
The second letter, written by Pte William Harley, was addressed to the person who found the bottle. His mother died years ago.
Pte Harley’s granddaughter Ann Turner told the ABC she and the soldier’s four other surviving grandchildren were “absolutely stunned” by the message.
“This truly feels like a miracle and we feel so much like our grandfather is reaching out to us from the grave,” he said.
“I get very emotional when I see that the other young man has a mother to write to, that the message in the bottle is for his mother, whereas our grandfather lost his mother a long time ago and wrote it to the person who found the bottle.”
Pte Harley’s letter said the bottle was thrown into the sea “somewhere in the Gulf”, a reference to the Great Australian Bight off the country’s south coast.
An oceanography professor told ABC it may have been in the water for only a few weeks before landing on Wharton Beach, where it could have remained buried for 100 years.
