World War I
Whilst working as a clerk at the British Steamship Company in the City of London, he joined the London Scottish Regiment in 1909 as a Territorial Army soldier, and on being mobilised on the outbreak of World War I, crossed the English Channel in September 1914 to France to take part in the fighting on the Western Front. On 31 October 1914, at the Battle of Messines, Colman was seriously wounded by shrapnel in his ankle, which gave him a limp that he would attempt to hide throughout the rest of his acting career. He was invalided out of the British Army in 1915 in consequence. (His fellow Hollywood actors Claude Raines, Herbert Marshall, Cedric Hardwicke and Basil Rathbone all saw service with the London Scottish in the war).
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“War is a beastly business, it is true, but one proof we are human is our ability to learn, even from it, how better to exist.”
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Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.”
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