Pfc Robert Ronald Bloom (16149875)

Robert Ronald Bloom

Private Robert ‘Bobby’ Bloom sent a Christmas card home from the front in 1944. It arrived in Ypsilanti, Michigan one week after his parents received notification of Bobby’s fatal wounding. He was killed by shrapnel near Großhau, Germany, in the Hürtgen Forest on December 12. He was one of around 35,000 allied casualties - 9,000 of them killed - in what is now widely considered to have been America’s worst campaign of WW2.

Two years earlier, in training at Fort Meade, he wrote to his mother.

Dear Mother,

Just a line to let you know I am getting along fine. I hope you are all the same. Has Earl went to the army yet? We had a very nice Christmas dinner here. I sent you a box of what we had. I sent you a pillow case for Christmas — did you get it yet? Well, I’ve got to close now.

Good bye with love,
Bob