By Two letters penned by Australian soldiers during World War I have washed ashore more than a century after they were thrown into the sea, a haunting discovery that links today’s generation with the hopes and fears of men bound for the front.
The notes, written in 1916 as the troops departed for France, reveal flashes of cheer amid the looming specter of battle. Private Malcolm Neville, 28, assured his mother that the ship’s meals were “real good” and that the soldiers were “as happy as Larry.” He would never return home. His comrade, 37-year-old Private William Harley, survived the war and made it back to Australia, according to the BBC.
The discovery came earlier this month at Wharton Beach, a remote coastal stretch near Esperance, when local resident Deb Brown and her family spotted the bottle during a cleanup ride. “We do a lot of cleaning up on our beaches and so would never go past a piece of rubbish. So this little bottle was lying there waiting to be picked up,” Brown told the Associated Press.
Century-old messages in bottle penned by WWI soldiers washes up on remote Australian beach https://t.co/5xMLauIBa3 pic.twitter.com/Nrk5bq0DvP
— New York Post (@nypost) October 29, 2025
Though the papers were damp, the ink endured. Brown set out to find the soldiers’ descendants, following Neville’s request that the message be sent to his mother. Her search led her to his great-nephew, Herbie Neville, who called the rediscovery “unbelievable” when speaking to ABC News.
Harley’s note, addressed simply “to the finder,” eventually reached his granddaughter Ann Turner and four other surviving grandchildren. “It really does feel like a miracle and we do very much feel like our grandfather has reached out for us from the grave,” Turner said, describing the family’s astonishment.
She reflected on the poignant contrast between the two letters. “I feel very emotional when I see that the other young man had a mother to write to, and that message in the bottle was to his mother, whereas our grandfather long ago had lost his mother so he just writes it to the finder of the bottle.”
Harley had written that he cast the bottle “somewhere in the Bight,” a reference to the Great Australian Bight. An oceanographer told ABC the bottle may have drifted only briefly before being buried in the sand for a century.
Now preserved as cherished heirlooms, the soldiers’ words—once carried by tide and time—offer a rare, intimate echo from one of the darkest chapters in human history.
