At a Florida high school tennis process, Suzanne Flament-Smith took her daughter and went for a move before the team was finished.
For her tour, she picked Bayshore Boulevard. The highway runs along the ocean in Safety Harbor, about 5 kilometers outside of Tampa, Florida. It was commonly a picturesque location because of Hurricane Debby’s removal of dirt. Cans with no protection, outdated sunscreen, and wet muck were scattered everywhere.
Flament-Smith began filling garbage bags, then spotted a oddity: An old-timey and weatherworn but distinct and dented drink amid the wastes.
She leaped in and viewed the glasses.
Oh well, she thought, I think I’ve found everything unique!
She had. It was a concept in a jug, handwritten under the letter” United States Navy, Amphibious Training Base, Little Creek, Virginia”. The day on the email:” 3/4/1945″.
But Flament-Smith did n’t open it immediately. She waited, picked up her daughter, drove house for her father to observe, FaceTelecharged her child at Furman University, and pulled the bottle before removing the lid.
” Unexpectedly, there was no smell”, she recalled in an interview.
Inside the drink, the piece of paper was folded in quarters. With it were three different things.
There was no identifying markings or engraved ability in the empty gun casing.
A round hunk of copper, the size of a pink ball, rolled around the base.
And a thin piece of wood, similar to a caffeine stirring, leaned against the neck of the drink.
Flament-Smith and her family tried to use the piece of wood to replace the letter from the jug, gave up, broke the jug and, reading the letter, were shocked by its time: March 1945.
In images, the text appears to have been written in a fountain pen. Some of it is difficult to read due to the dated, inconsistent handwriting, and sporadic misspellings.
But it began,” Dear Lee”,
” Received your letter yesterday, was glad to hear from you. You were a small enraged the other day, so be it. Well, that is a daily occurrence around below. They have a table and some decent beer.
” Bud”, the soldier writes. Schlitz, maybe. And “old fiful, Pale Ail”.
” I get glad every day I’m on the foundation”.
The center, which is now known as Little Creek, was established in the early 1940s on the southern shore of the Chesapeake Bay as a teaching facility for marine art and assault techniques. Sailors, soldiers and Marines trained it,  , a few hundred thousand of them, the Navy says, some ending up at Normandy.
The letter writer explains he’s then “in Radio School” before asking his friend about a contact and, then,” Who is your dream woman now”.
” Well Lee”, he continues,” I have to fall out for school now but will write again to morrow, and tell you how I made out in Norfolk tonigh”.
He explains:” Boy I got a little Red haid child she is most right”.
He closes:” Your bro,…”
The trademark is difficult to discern.
” Jim”, perhaps.
Whether the email has been upright for nearly 80 years or was placed in the container long after it was written, the communication reveals: Some topics of conversation, between old friends, are immortal.
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