Photo courtesy of Saxmundham Museum
High Street (South), stop 13.
Private 14923, Horace Edgar Lee, 8th Battalion, Suffolk Regiment, 1893 – 3 March 1917
Horace, one of twelve surviving children assisted in his father’s tobacconist’s business located at 2, High Street. In July 1915 he was posted to France and survived nearly two years, fighting in the major battles, where he experienced gas attacks and trench warfare. Horace survived the Somme offensive of 1916 but received wounds possibly in the Miramount region of the Somme where his battalion had fought in January and February 1917. After treatment at a Field Dressing Station and transferral to a Field Hospital in France, Horace was sent for further treatment in Hampshire where he died. He is buried in a Commonwealth War Grave in St John the Baptist churchyard.
Born in Camden Town, London to Walter and Esther Lee, Horace moved to Saxmundham with his parents at the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1911, Horace, one of twelve surviving children assisted in his father’s tobacconist’s business located at 2 The High Street, (then the business moved across the road to number 3, now the Florists) Saxmundham. Apparently, the family lived there too, albeit four elder children had left home. In addition to the shop, Walter Lee ran a cigarette manufacturing business. However, he lost the services of Horace when he enlisted in Saxmundham the 8th Battalion, Suffolk Regiment.
Horace received the trilogy of World War One Medals; the 1915 Star, British and Victory Medals. In July 1915 he was posted to France and survived nearly two years, fighting in the major battles, where he experienced gas attacks and trench warfare. Horace survived the Somme offensive of 1916 but received wounds possibly in the Miramount region of the Somme where his battalion had fought in January and February 1917. After treatment at a Field Dressing Station and transferral to a Field Hospital in France, Horace was sent for further treatment in Hampshire where he died. One wonders if his parents were able to see him before his death? However, they did have his body returned to Saxmundham, where he is buried in a Commonwealth War Grave in St John the Baptist churchyard. Horace is also commemorated on the Church, Chapel memorial plaques, Oddfellows wooden plaque and the Fromus Square Memorial. The devasting year became bleaker for Horace’s family.
Towards the end of 1917, Horace’s mother, Esther died leaving Walter to care for the children, the youngest, Miriam, being just six years old. It appears that daughter Beatrice undertook the running of the household whilst her father continued with his tobacconist business. In 1921, aged eighteen she is recorded as employed in home duties. Meanwhile her brother Sidney Oswald Lee worked as a warehouseman for L.G.Backhouse, grocer in Station Road, Frederick Henry Lee was a butcher’s assistant for G Reynolds in the High Street, and Bertram Paul Lee, aged fourteen worked as an errand boy for S.L. Gray, Chemist also in the High Street. As with so many, the Lee family faced extreme grief, but had no alternative than to carry on with life.
