School, A Job & World War I
Rathbone was educated at Repton School in Repton, Derbyshire and was employed by the Liverpool and Globe Insurance Companies.
At the end of 1915 he was conscripted via the Derby Scheme into the British Army as a Private with the London Scottish Regiment, thereby joining a regiment that also counted in its ranks his future professional acting contemporaries Claude Rains, Herbert Marshall and Ronald Colman at different points thru the conflict. After basic training with the London Scots in early 1916 he received a commission as a lieutenant in the Liverpool Scottish, 2nd Battalion, where he served as an intelligence officer and eventually attained the rank of captain. During the war, Rathbone displayed a penchant for disguise (a skill which he coincidentally shared with what would become perhaps his most memorable character, Sherlock Holmes), when on one occasion, in order to have better visibility, Rathbone convinced his superiors to allow him to scout enemy positions during daylight hours instead of during the night, as was the usual practice in order to minimize the chance of detection by the enemy. Rathbone completed the mission successfully through his skillful use of camouflage, which allowed him to escape detection by the enemy. In September 1918, he was awarded the Military Cross. His younger brother, John, fell in action during the war.
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Famous quotes containing the words war i, job, world and/or war:
“War is too important a matter to be left to the military.”
—Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929)
“My days are swifter than a runner; they flee away, they see no good. They go by like skiffs of reed, like an eagle swooping on the prey.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Job 9:25-26.
“We, too, had good attendance once,
Hearers and hearteners of the work;
Aye, horsemen for companions,
Before the merchant and the clerk
Breathed on the world with timid breath.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The remnant of Indians thereabout—all but exterminated in their recent and final war with regular white troops, a war waged by the Red Men for their native soil and natural rights—had been coerced into the occupancy of wilds not far beyond the Mississippi.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)