Story
Robert Bollom suffered a 'gas shell' wound on the Western Front on 17 May of the last year of the war and was treated at a military hospital in Rouen. Born on Christmas Day 1881, He was 34 years and 11 months old when he attested in December 1915 and was mobilised three months later. He stood just 4ft. 11.5in. (shorter than the recommended minimum height for a man of his age on enlistment) and had a chest girth of 34in. Robert lived at 5 Croft Road, Poole, and named his next of kin as his father, Henry Bollam, who lived at 8 Bishop Street, Moorsfield, Bristol. He served, initially, with the Devonshire Regiment (number 22404.) Later he was with the Wiltshires and the Royal Fusiliers before ending up with the Labour Corps (regimental number 60056.) Robert received the British War and Victory medals for serving in a theatre of war abroad. In 1911, Robert, a single man, was still living with his family in Bristol and working as a labourer at a painters'. His dad was a tanner scourer, two sisters were cotton weavers, one brother was a cotton spinner and another a miner. (On joining the Army, when living in Poole, he named his trade as labourer.) At the outbreak of the Second World War Robert was back in Bristol, working as a painter and still living with elderly parents and other members of the family in Bishop Street. * Please contact us if you wish to suggest any addition or amendment.
Service Number
60056, 22404, 26521, 31046