Bottle found on Cape Cod may contain messages from WWII POWs
COTUIT - A buried message in a bottle leads to a historic find in Cotuit. The note inside may be messages from prisoners of war during World War II.
"Pulled it out of the ground and I was wondering what it was," said Shane Adams, the man who found the bottle while pruning a property on Point Isabella. "My jaw kind of dropped, and I was like, 'Oh my goodness, this might be the real deal?"
When Adams began examining the bottle, he noticed German names written on old newspaper ads. It also had the year 1944 written on it. At first, he called his boss who laughed at him in disbelief, then he contacted the Cotuit Historical Society.
"We knew a good probability that it was real because of Camp Candoit," explained Cotuit Historical Society President Beth Johnson. "Toward the end of the war, they started imprisoning German POWs here at Camp Candoit."
Johnson says the camp was a satellite location for Camp Edwards in Bourne. At Camp Candoit soldiers were training 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," added Johnson. "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 Cotuit Historical Society plans to keep the bottle in their museum. They say not much is known about what happened to the prisoners after the camp disbanded.
"A lot of people think they stayed, and had new lives here," suspects Johnson.
