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A 108-year-old message in a bottle surfaced April on a beach in Germany. GETTY IMAGES

KEY POINTS

  • A local landscaper found the bottle while working on a property in Cotuit, Massachusetts
  • He said there were three or four little notes inside the bottle
  • Cotuit's Historical Society will keep the bottle while researching its origin

Messages in a bottle found in a neighborhood in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, might be from prisoners of war during World War II.

Local landscaper Shane Adams found the possibly historic bottle while working on a property in the Point Isabella neighborhood of Cotuit, the Cape Cod Times reported.

"There were three or four little notes," Adams told the outlet. "I saw German names and a date of 1944 and it said something like 'prisoner of war.'"

According to Adams, he saw the names Johann Huppertz, Andreas Wollny and Lothar Gernert in the messages, some of which appeared to be written on cardboard from a Quaker rice box.

Believing they might hold historical value, Adams left the notes inside the bottle intact and contacted the Historical Society of Santuit & Cotuit.

"We knew a good probability that it was real because of Camp Candoit," Cotuit Historical Society president Beth Johnson said, as quoted by CBS News. "Toward the end of the war, they started imprisoning German POWs here at Camp Candoit."

The camp was a satellite location for Camp Edwards in Bourne, according to Johnson. Soldiers trained at Camp Candoit to operate amphibious vehicles similar to duck boats.

"Kids came so young that they didn't know how to swim, and then they had to be taught to swim with army gear on," Johnson told CBS. "In the fall, there was a really big hurricane that hit Cotuit. It was a mess with trees down everywhere. They used German POWs to help pick up debris."

The Historical Society said that it will keep the bottle in its museum and research more about its history.

The U.S. Army reportedly built a POW camp for captured German soldiers at Camp Edwards, according to the Massachusetts National Guard website. The camp, at a given time, housed up to 2,000 POWs.

Joseph Yukna, the co-founder of the Cape Cod Military Museum, said that Adams' discovery could be historical.

"It all fits the narrative and history that I'm aware of," Yukna said, as quoted by Cape Cod Times.

A person runs as a great white shark swims just meters (yards) away on the Cape Cod National Sea Shore on the eastern side of Cape Cod, Massachusetts
A person runs as a great white shark swims just meters (yards) away on the Cape Cod National Sea Shore on the eastern side of Cape Cod, Massachusetts AFP / Joseph Prezioso