From Birdsboro, Pennsylvania, Earl Rahn entered the Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1909. He began his academic life in the Scientific course but then changed to the Philosophical course. He participated in activities ranging from the track team to the debate team, and from drama to Glee Club. He wrote for the Dickinsonian and had a poem entitled "Fate" published in the 1915 Microcosm. In the most cruel of ironies, this poem deals with the possibility of early death. Rahn graduated with a bachelor of philosophy degree with his class of 1912.
At the outbreak of war, Rahn enlisted and took his officer training at Fort Oglethorpe, Tennessee before moving on to his unit at Columbia, South Carolina. His regiment was in France by mid-1918 and he was "struck down in youth" at Bois de Lar Rapp on October 18, 1918.
