Messages in bottle from WWI soldiers discovered 109 years later

MELBOURNE, Australia — Messages in a bottle written by two Australian soldiers a few days into their voyage to the battlefields of France during World War I have been found more than a century later on Australia’s coast.

The Brown family found the Schweppes-brand bottle just above the waterline at Wharton Beach near Esperance in Western Australia state on Oct. 9, Deb Brown said on Tuesday.

Her husband Peter and daughter Felicity made the find during one of the family’s regular quad bike expeditions to clear the beach of trash.

“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,” Deb Brown said.

Inside the clear, thick glass were cheerful letters written in pencil by Privates Malcolm