Letters written 109 years ago by two World War I soldiers have been reunited with their family members after they were found in a bottle on a remote beach in Western Australia.
By Katrina Tap for Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) News
The letters, written by Private Malcolm Neville and Private William Harley, were thrown overboard in a soda bottle from His Majesty’s Australian Transport Ballarat on the way to Europe in 1916.
Private Harley’s letter said the men were “somewhere in the Bight.”
The Brown family, who discovered the bottle on Wharton Beach near Esperance, sent the letters to the Diggers’ respective families in Adelaide and Alice Springs after tracking them down via social media.
Private Harley’s granddaughter, Michele Patterson, said each of his five surviving grandchildren regarded the letters as a “miracle.”
“William was the one person of all of our ancestors that I know about, that I really, really always wanted to meet,” Ms Patterson said.
“This, for me, is very close to being able to meet him.”
Timing ‘serendipitous’
Before and after the war, Private Harley worked as a pattern-maker for the family-owned foundry.
He was responsible for making designs for decorative cast-iron pieces, including lacework seen on buildings across Adelaide.
Ms Patterson had been on a decades-long quest to find the original cast from the Harley catalogue to replace a fountain base in her front garden.
“I hadn’t found anything for 40 years,” she said.
“I found it within a few days after the letter arrived, so if that’s not magical, I don’t know what is.”
At the same time, Private Harley’s 14-year-old great-great-grandson was on a technology-free school camp sailing in the Great Australian Bight, where the students were encouraged to write letters home.
“The result of this is my older brother, one of William’s surviving grandchildren, received two letters from somewhere in the bight in the same week,” she said.
“One from his grandson, and one from his deceased grandfather, written 109 years apart.”
Wharton Beach, WA
In June this year, Ms Patterson and her cousins began putting together the Harley family history.
A previously unknown address included in the letter has helped trace their family back to when they first arrived in Australia in 1881.
“This literally has been like finding the clue in a treasure map for us to be able to piece together the Harley family history,” she said.
Now that the letter from Private Harley has been returned to the family, they are looking at how best to preserve it.
“The letter itself, now that we’ve seen it for ourselves, is just so brittle,” Ms Patterson said.
“We need to find the right home for it for posterity.
“We’ll be forever grateful to the family in Western Australia, the Browns, who took such care with their find on the beach and have managed to track us down and give us such an important and historic part of our history back.”
Private Neville’s great-nephew, Herbie Neville, previously told the ABC his family had been “beside themselves” since the letter’s discovery.
Herbie Neville, who now lives in Alice Springs, is the recipient of the other letter found in the bottle.
“It’s amazing how much has come to the surface from his short time in World War I, unbelievable,” he said.
War an ‘idealised adventure’
Private Harley left for war in August 1916 to join his older brother Henry, who was already in Europe.
Unbeknownst to Private Harley, his brother was killed in action just days after he left Adelaide.
“[In the letter] they are in very good spirits and they were telling everyone not to worry and that they hope to be home soon when the business was all finished with,” Ms Patterson said.
“It’s very sad that he didn’t know about that.”
Private Harley returned to Australia and went on to have children, but eventually died from the long-term effects of injuries he suffered during the war.
His son, Harry, went on to fight in World War II, but was also killed in action.
“It’s often difficult to remember that that generation, my parents, were sandwiched between the two World Wars and they knew nothing different,” Ms Patterson said.
Australian War Memorial curator Bryce Abraham said by 1916, the extent of casualties at Gallipoli was well known.
Despite this, he said war was still regarded as an “idealised adventure”.
“For these men, it was for most of them their first time going overseas,” he said.
Dr. Abraham said many men took up letter and diary writing to keep themselves entertained on the weeks-long journey to Europe.
However, there are only three “messages in a bottle” in the museum’s collection.
“It’s just the case that [most] bottles likely smashed, or the cork came undone, and the bottles sank to the bottom of the ocean, or are still buried in sand dunes out there waiting to be found,” he said.
“It wasn’t, as far as we know, it wasn’t a super common practice, but it definitely did occur.
“It seems to me almost a thing of the times, as well, that as part of that great adventure, it was like a fun thing to do in secret, you know, toss a bottle over the side.”
Read the original article in its entirety on ABC News.
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