Florida woman finds WW II message in a bottle in tropical storm Debby's wake

As It Happens5:57Florida woman finds WW II message in a bottle in tropical storm Debby's wake

Suzanne Flament-Smith was picking up trash when she stumbled upon treasure.

The Odessa, Fla., woman was in nearby Safety Harbor last week, cleaning up some of the plastic and debris that had washed up in the flood waters from tropical storm Debby, when she came across a glass bottle with a hand-written note inside.

"I knew it was something unique," Flament-Smith told As It Happens guest host Catherine Cullen. 

She took the bottle home and opened it with her family. Inside, they found a bullet casing, a candy-sized iron ball and some sand.

"Half of the letter was faded, but some of it was very clear. And one thing that was clear was the date," she said.

It was dated March 3, 1945 — the final year of the Second World War. The paper had a U.S. navy letterhead.

"That was when I was like, oh my goodness, this is a special thing that I have come upon," she said.

'They have pretty good beer'

The letter, addressed simply to "Lee," and the letterhead indicated it was sent from the Amphibious Training Base in Little Creek, Va.

The base — more than 1,300 kilometres from where Flament-Smith found the bottle — is still operational today, under the name Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story.

The U.S. navy did not respond to CBC's request for comment, but spokeswoman April Phillips told 10 Tampa Bay, a CBS affiliate, that the base was originally created to train "amphibious forces like the folks who landed on D-Day on Normandy 80 years ago."

The navy said it was unable to authenticate the letter, but confirmed the letterhead appears legitimate. Phillips promised to investigate. 

"We're going to do some sleuthing and see what we can track down," she said. "I can't wait for this journey to discover what we are going to learn."

Flament-Smith says she could only make out parts of the letter. (Her daughter, unfamiliar with cursive handwriting, couldn't read a word of it, she said.)

It reads, in part: "Received your letter yesterday. Was glad to hear from you.  So you got a little lit up the other day. Well, that is a everyday thing around here. They have a bar and they have pretty good beer."

Flament-Smith says she was taken aback by the tone. 

"It's a very light letter, which makes you wonder, was there so much going on [that] this was the kind of outlet to make it light and to kind of maybe not deal with the reality that it's World War II and that he appears to be on a navy base?" she said.

"It's a lot more casual than I expected, in a pleasant way."

She says she's working with the navy and veterans groups on Facebook to try to track down the family of the letter's writer or recipient. 

In the meantime, she's using the discovery to impart some wisdom.

"The main lesson I've tried to tell my kids through this is that if you make an effort to do good deeds, good things typically can come from that," she said.

"And that life is full of treasure. Sometimes we just have to slow down and take a moment and look around us."