A Reliable Series postcard that was posted in Coleraine using a ½d. stamp on Tuesday the 24th. September 1907. It was sent to:
Miss M. McAlister, Main Street, Ballymoney.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"Dear M., I was looking out for you on the Sabbath but I did not see you. I even went up the Island's road to see you. Something struck me - J. was staying over the Sabbath & you were not for going home. I then thought that you couldn't get to the bike. We are to have Ballymoney football boys for tea tomorrow. We were expecting you to come down tomorrow. I have sent a P.C. to Belfast. Yours, K."
Coleraine is eight miles by road from Ballymoney.
The Sinking of the Cumberland
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, on the 24th. September 1907, the United States registered 413-ton schooner Cumberland sank off Wolf Point, New Brunswick, Canada. All six people on board survived.
Marcus Bloom
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, the 24th. September 1907 marked the birth of Marcus Bloom.
Marcus Reginald Bloom, who died on the 6th. November 1944, was a British Special Operations Executive agent during the Second World War.
-- Marcus Bloom - The Early Years
Bloom was born in Tottenham, London, the son of Harry Pizer Bloom and Anna Sadie Davidoff Bloom, into an orthodox Jewish home.
Marcus helped out working at his father’s cinema in Wandsworth, their mail order textile firm, and in their restaurant business.
In the 1930's Marcus's father sent him Paris to run the mail-order business, and he became fluent in French. The firm closed after five years, and he returned to London and married in March 1938.
-- Marcus Bloom in World War II
Marcus served in the Royal Artillery in 1941 and joined the Special Operations Executive in February 1942.
On the night of the 3rd./4th. November 1942 he was landed at Port Miou, near Cassis in southern France, with SOE agents George Starr, organiser of WHEELWRIGHT; Mary Herbert, courier for SCIENTIST; Marie-Thérèse Le Chêne, courier for SPRUCE; and Odette Sansom for SPINDLE.
He became wireless operator in the PRUNUS network organised by Maurice Pertschuk, with Philippe de Gunzbourg as courier.
The risk of sending to the Field this officer with his imperfect French and his Anglo-Saxon Jewish appearance was only justified by an extreme penury of WT operators. He was very courageous and fought to the finish….it is clear he did a good job for many months.
Bloom worked very successfully, and sent and received many messages to and from London (estimated at over fifty), having to keep constantly on the move to avoid the German radio detection vans.
Philippe de Gunzbourg noted that Pertschuk had a reckless lack of security, with resistance leaders sharing tables in black-market restaurants in Toulouse and speaking in English, and on the 12th. April 1943, Pertschuk, Bloom, and several of their key colleagues were arrested.
They were possibly betrayed by double agent Roger Bardet. The network collapsed, though de Gunzbourg escaped and transferred to the WHEELWRIGHT network. Pertschuk was deported to Buchenwald and executed.
Bloom was taken to Fresnes prison and Avenue Foch in Paris and severely beaten but revealed nothing.
In August 1944 he was deported to Mauthausen and executed on the 6th. November 1944. Marcus was 37 years of age when he died.
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