SECOND LIEUTENANT ARNOLD WILLIAM RASH
SUFFOLK REGIMENT
31ST JULY 1917 AGE 25
BURIED: BUFFS ROAD CEMETERY, YPRES, BELGIUM
To the Greek philosopher, Socrates (469-399 BC), "truth and justice" were inseparable and essential for good government. Socrates didn't mean justice as an external force applied for the maintenance of law and order but as a quality attained by those who have truthfully examined and understood themselves. It is this quality that will fit them for leadership. Almost two and a half thousand years later truth and justice are still seen as the ideals for a society.
Socrates refusal to compromise his principles, even in the face of his death sentence, is seen as a supreme example of maintaining these ideals. Mrs Mary Rash, Second Lieutenant Rash's mother, implies the same attachment to principle in her son's determination to fight.
Arnold Rash was already a territorial soldier when the war broke out. He belonged to the 4th Battalion the Suffolk Regiment and went with it to France in November 1914, serving with them continuously until he returned to take a commission in October 1915. Despite the fact that the War Graves Commission says he served with the 5th Battalion the Suffolk Regiment he was not serving with them when he was killed, rather he was with the Cambridgeshire Regiment. This took part in the opening battle of Third Ypres on 31 July 1917, the day Arnold Rash was killed.
Arnold's younger brother, Ralph, was killed on the Somme on 12 October 1916 aged 19. His body was never recovered and he is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial.