Tiger Trooper Les Lee
A salute to Les Lee. Les Lee was a robust, athletic ruckman, who was recruited to Richmond from the Richmond Juniors club. He made his senior league debut with the Tigers in Round 17 of the 1913 season against Melbourne at Punt Road Oval. It was an impressive debut, too, with a match report in the local paper stating: “Lee, who formerly starred with the Richmond Central team, gave a good display in his first game, and with experience should prove an acquisition”. The then 18-year-old played only one more senior game – the following week – in the final round of the season, against University, also at Punt Road. For some reason, however, Lee decided to turn his back on the VFL at the end of 1913, and he returned to local football with the Balmain club in the Richmond District league in 1914, before joining VFA club Williamstown in 1915. But when World War 1 broke out, Lee’s thoughts turned from football to serving his country, and on March 7, 1916, he was accepted into the Australian Imperial Force, at age 22. Lee was posted to the 10th Machine Gun Company and, after rookie training, sailed for Britain on May 27, 1916, landing at Devonport, near Southampton, six weeks later. From there, Lee underwent further training at the Larkhill camp, on the Salisbury Plain. Before being sent to the front, there was one more game of football for Lee to play . . . He was selected in a 3rd Australian Division side (wearing blue with a white map of Australia) to play an Australian Training Unit side (wearing red with a white kangaroo motif) at West Kensington, London, on October 28. Players were selected from the ranks of football's elite, from Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania. The match, which drew a crowd of 8000 Diggers and curious locals, was played in front of King Manuel of Portugal and the Prince of Wales (later King Edward V111). The 100 pounds proceeds went to the British and French Red Cross Societies and Collingwood's Dan Minogue, who played with the 3rd Division side, suggested with self-explanatory understatement: “The stunts the Diggers pulled to go to London to see the game!” Minogue (who subsequently coached Richmond to two premierships, in 1920-21), many years later in the ‘Sporting Globe’ newspaper, wrote glowingly of Lee's performance in that match: “The hero of the game was an unknown player, Lee of Richmond. I believe that had he survived the war, Richmond would have had a magnificent player, another Jack Dyer, in young Lee.” It was not to be, however, as Lee was killed in action on June 8, 1917, at Snitchells Farm, Messines, Belgium. Or, to be more specific, he was wounded and reported “missing in action”. His body was never found. It seems Lee was in a trench when hit by a shell. He was severely wounded to the head, chest and leg and his mates tried to drag him back into the trench. Tragically, his bulk told against him and his mates were unable to complete the task. Now, nearly 100 years later, it will never be known what happened to Lee after he was hit by that exploding shell. All that remains of the former Tiger are five letters – Lee, L.E. (for Leslie Edward) – engraved at the Menin Gate, Ypres (pronounced Eeeper), Belgium, a massive monument built to commemorate 54,896 British and Empire soldiers who fell in the Ypres Salient and have no known grave. Another memorial, 10 kilometres north of Ypres at Tyne Cot, bears the name of another 34,984 missing men of the empire. Lee's name is at the bottom of a column in a long list of those who served and fell with the AIF's 10th Machine Gun Company. Fortunately, the engraving does not face the weather and remains clear and sharp. The Richmond Football Club was deeply saddended on hearing of Lee's death and carried this obituary in its 1917 annual report: “We regret to announce the death at the front of L. Lee, one of our former players. 'Leggo' Lee, as he generally was known, respected and esteemed by all. A Richmond boy born and bred (he actually was born in Adelaide, but indeed lived most of his life in Richmond), he was a wholehearted supporter of our club and looked eagerly to the time he would once more don the uniform and do battle for his district, but it was not to be and poor 'Leggo' is now 'sleeping the sleep of all time somewhere in France'. "One of the many who have made the great sacrifice in the supreme cause of the Empire, we will treasure his memory as one of the boys of the Richmond Football Club who did his duty nobly and fearlessly, and we tend our sincere sympathy to his family in its sad bereavement.”
