The Patriot Post® · A Message In A Bottle

When a grieving Welsh family, unable to bear what promised to be a dismal Christmas at home, was in Barbados they hit upon an warm idea. They chartered a small boat and, in an effort to put closure on their heartbreak, they asked the captain to go far out to sea and then still the engines. Once there, a tearful ceremony commenced on what was the first Tuesday of the New Year and even the boat captain cried.

You see, in September of 2009, a private in the British Army with the 2nd battalion Royal Welsh had been killed by a road-side bomb in Afghanistan. James Prosser died too early in life; he was only 21, and now, with the sun beginning to set over the deep blue of the sea, they toasted his memory with his favorite drink, an anise-flavored liqueur called Sambuca.

They prayed and they sang, as is done at even the smallest service, and then they put several handwritten notes in the empty bottle before James’ mother gently tossed their tribute and their goodbyes into the depths. After the boat was making its way back to the island, the Sambuca bottle bobbled back to the surface. That’s when the ocean currents – and the rest of the story – began.

On April 20 there was another tragedy when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. The results were devastating and the ensuing oil spill soon became one of the worst environment disasters of all time. But a fact often overlooked is that as the BP oil crews have gone about cleaning up the mess, they have also gathered thousands of pounds of garbage from the southern shoreline.

Horn Island is a small barrier island off the coast of Mississippi. It is a couple of miles long but is less than a mile wide and sits not far from Biloxi and Ocean Springs. It is also about 1,300 miles from Barbados. Not so long ago, in the way things sometimes go, a clean-up crew from a company called Progressive Pipeline Management fished a Sambuca bottle from the sea.

“It was like a Hollywood movie,” crew chief Doug Kirchoff said. “What we found was about a soldier that lost his life in the Afghanistan war and his family had written him a series of letters kind of sharing their thoughts and emotions.”

Don’t you see? The bottle had made a long journey to another boat and, under another day of sun, the workers unscrewed the bottle. Rather than liqueur, inside were four notes that had been written by the soldier’s mother, another son, her daughter and the daughter’s fiancée.

“Each person, when we unwound the letters, started opening one letter at a time and reading one letter at a time,” Kirchoff said. “As we found out after about two letters the whole occasion turned real somber and we were kind of taken aback and were like, ‘Wow! This is a little more than we anticipated at first.’”

The oil crew members immediately deployed the Internet, searching for a soldier who was named James Prosser. Then they took a picture of the crew with the bottle, put it with a Progressive Pipeline tee-shirt and wrote a different kind of note to James’ mother.

“Words cannot express our heartfelt sympathy to your family over the loss of James. Your letters describe a remarkable young man who was very loved by his family and friends. We extend our gratitude to James for the service he did in Afghanistan and we recognize the courage, the strength and bravery it requires to serve in the Armed Forces.

"You are in our thoughts as we all continue to pray for the safe return of our soldiers worldwide. As we are certain he did before his death, James has continued to touch the lives of many people in a positive way. Finding that bottle is something we will never forget,” the note said before they all signed it and mailed the package to Britain.

Sarah Adams, the soldier’s mother, could hardly believe what actually happened either. “It was an open letter to anyone who found it - but I never thought it would be seen again. The message was all about James, how much we loved him and how much we miss him.

"I wanted to make everyone aware that we’re responsible for the world we live in and not to forget the soldiers who have given up their lives,” Sarah added, “Now I am so delighted it has been found by such caring people and that James has touched their lives as well.”

Kirchoff, the clean-up chief, told CNN, “It seems too good to be true. Both of us fighting different tragedies; one in war and us fighting the battle with the oil spill. It just seems like it was just meant to be. It does feel like … our crew was destined to find this bottle.”

And the bottle itself? Sarah has asked that the crew seal it and keep it. Its voyage is done, its mission complete.