Of Australian soldier later killed in action in France
An Australian soldier wrote to his mother while sailing to the war in France, in which he would be killed, and threw the letter into the sea in a bottle.
The message, dated 15 August 1916, was found inside the bottle that ended up on a remote Australian beach near Esperance, 750km south of Perth in Western Australia.
“All is well. The food so far is very good, with the exception of one meal, which we have thrown into the sea,” had written 28-year-old Private Malcolm Alexander Neville, later killed in action in France in April 1917. And he signs “your beloved son Malcolm, somewhere in the ocean.” The message asked the “person who finds this bottle” to send the contents to his mother in the small town of Wilkawatt in South Australia.
A woman, Debra Brown, found the bottle after 109 years while collecting rubbish on the beach. The bottle is believed to have surfaced after a severe winter storm. The woman managed to track down the soldier’s great-grandson, Herbie Neville, in Alice Springs via the Australian War Memorial website.
Neville’s research later revealed that, after a six-week voyage aboard the Hmat Ballarat, Malcolm Alexander Neville landed in Britain in September 1916. He was sent to France in December, fighting with the 48th Infantry Battalion from February 1917. He was killed in action at the Battle of Bullecourt on 11 April, and was then buried in a cemetery in London.
