According to a report by the Associated Press, a message in a bottle written by two Australian soldiers just days after they set off for the French battlefield during World War I was found near the coast of Australia more than a century later. Debb Brown said on Tuesday that the family found the Schweppes glass bottle near the waterline at Wotton Beach near Esperance, Western Australia, on October 9, 2023.

Her husband Peter and daughter Felicity discovered the bottle during a regular motorcycle ride cleanup activity by the family on the beach. "We often clean the beach, and we never ignore the trash. So this small bottle was just waiting to be picked up," said Debb Brown. Inside this clear and thick glass bottle is a cheerful letter written with a pencil on August 15, 1916, by Private Malcolm Neville, 27 years old, and William Haley, 37 years old.

Their transport ship HMAT A70 Ballarat left Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, on August 12 of the same year, heading to the other end of the world, where the soldiers would reinforce the 48th Australian Infantry Battalion on the Western Front in Europe. Neville died in battle a year later. Haley was wounded twice but survived the war, and died in Adelaide in 1934 from cancer, his family said, stating that the cancer was caused by the poison gas used by the Germans in the trenches. Neville requested that the finder of the bottle deliver his letter to his mother Robettina Neville, who now lives in the almost ghost town of Wilkawatt in South Australia. Haley's mother had already passed away in 1916, and he agreed that the finder could keep his letter.

Haley wrote: "May the person who finds it be as well as we are now." Neville wrote to his mother that he was "very happy, and the food was good, except for one meal that we threw into the sea." Neville wrote that the ship "was rocking up and down, but we were very happy," using an Australian slang word that is no longer commonly used, meaning extremely happy. Neville wrote that he and his fellow soldiers "were somewhere at sea." Haley wrote that they "were somewhere in Bass Strait," referring to the Great Australian Bight.

This vast open bay starts east of Adelaide and extends to the western end of Esperance. Debb Brown suspects that the bottle did not drift too far. It may have been buried in the dunes on the shore for over a century.

In recent months, the extensive erosion of the dunes at Wotton Beach due to large waves may have caused it to fall out. Although the paper was wet, the handwriting remained clear. Therefore, Debb Brown was able to inform the relatives of the two soldiers about the discovery. She said, "The bottle remained in its original condition. There was no barnacle attached to it. I believe if it had been in the sea or exposed for so long, the paper would have been decomposed by the sun, and we wouldn't have been able to read it." Haley's granddaughter Ann Turner said her family was "very shocked" by the discovery.

Turner told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: "We couldn't believe it. It felt like a miracle, and we really felt that our grandfather reached out to us from his grave." Herbert Neville, the great-nephew of Neville, said that this "unbelievable" discovery brought the family together. Herbert Neville said, "It sounds like he was very happy when he went to war. But everything that happened was heartbreaking. He lost his life, which was very sad." The great-nephew proudly added, "Wow, he was a great man."

Original: www.toutiao.com/article/1847326999708684/

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