Robert Blout...We all call him uncle Bob
Last night we celebrated his 96th birthday!
He looks maybe mid 70's and obviously has longevity in his bloodline.
He is all alone save for all of us. None of the people of his generation are around anymore, Life for them a thing of the past.
Uncle Bob is no ordinary man to say the least. He lives very modestly in a trailer he purchased sometime in the early 1960's. A small white and blue thing that he resides in and hardly if ever leaves anymore.
Up until a year or so ago, he did morning situps and pushups, a carryover from his Army days no doubt.
Bob, who enlisted in the Army for the infantry was sent to Great Britian. He joined over a million other US Soldiers waiting to invade Europe. He was some sort of super infantry guy and was picked to go join a bunch of crazy guys, called Rangers. Bob says they were nuts, so much so that he asked to be placed back into his old unit with the buddies he had joined with and others he had come to know.
He spent 5 months with the rangers, but when D-Day came, he hit the beaches with an infantry division. Bob crewed a half track towing a 37mm anti tank gun. He fought all the way across France and into Germany. He was wounded, fought nearly every day, was overrun once and had to flee into the forest to survive. He fought back perusing German infantry with their own weapons, but ditched them for fear he would be killed upon capture. Germans did not take lightly to us soldiers using their dead comrades weapons against them. Bob didn't care. He liked the 9mm sub machine gun over his Garand.
Bob fought every day until the war ended and then served for a goodly time as the occupying Army in Germany. Blout is a German name. His grand parents I think came from the old country, and I believe he speaks some of the language. He can't hear anymore, so conversation is difficult.
His walls are festooned with daggers and swords he took off of dead SS officers he killed. My boys are always fascinated by them. He even picked up what I think is a French sword from the crusades from a monastery.
He has a swastika luger in the 7.62 caliber and some other weird German pistol. But he doesn't talk about it. Looking at pics he has will cause tears and a PTSD like reaction from him.
He's the real deal, and he is one of the last. Happy Birthday Bob!
He won't read this, he doesn't do computers...
