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).
Read more about this topic: Ronald Colman
Famous quotes containing the words war i, world and/or war:
“War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“It is a secret from nobody that the famous random event is most likely to arise from those parts of the world where the old adage “There is no alternative to victory” retains a high degree of plausibility.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“To be deeply committed to negotiations, to be opposed to a particular war or military action, is not only considered unpatriotic, it also casts serious doubt on one’s manhood.”
—Myriam Miedzian, U.S. author. Boys Will Be Boys, ch. 2 (1991)