Soldier, farrier, bullock-wrangler: The untold story of Cecil Gordon Lee

Bullocks were used in WW1 to transport supplies, as horses were considered too valuable to be used for this menial task.
Kem Ormond is a feature writer for NZME community newspapers and The Country.
OPINION
I have written often about the war horses and the huge part they played in World War I – what I didn’t know until this week was that in Egypt, some of the New Zealand soldiers used bullocks to pull wagons that carried supplies.
One such soldier was Cecil Gordon Lee, affectionately known as “Togo Lee” who was consigned to the Auckland Mounted Rifles Regiment.
This regiment was established with 26 officers, 523 other ranks, 528 riding horses, 74 draught horses and six pack horses.
As a mounted infantry, the regiment rode into battle on their horses but were expected to dismount and fight on foot.
Lee served from 1914 to 1918 along with his brother Lenard, and on his return, he filed his photos away and never really talked about the war, which often was the case.
This week his grandson Ross Lee contacted me, having held on to his grandfather’s photos for many years.
Now, three generations later, and with limited knowledge of what his grandfather endured, it is time to piece as much of the gathered information together as possible before that history is lost.
Lee left the shores of New Zealand at approximately 17 or 18 years of age, a fine-looking young man who had a real love of the land, horses, and his family.
Auckland was where he grew up and at an early age was an apprentice blacksmith.
This was a thriving business back then as mostly draught horses were used in the carrying trade, and they all needed to be shod.
Once in Egypt, Lee quickly learnt how to deal with minor horse ailments, learnt to suture their wounds, file their teeth, and take on the role of shoeing smith as they called it back then.
Two photos that may have never been seen before (apart from family members) are of the bullocks the regiment used in Egypt.
One is of a rider on the back of a bullock and the other is of a bullock being shod.
Like the horses, they often worked on rough terrain and needed shoes made to protect their hooves.
It was not an easy job when it came to a bullock with split hoofs – the shoes had to be made in two pieces.
With no bails, nothing, in fact, to secure the bullock while being shod, it all came down to ropes, energy and good old grit and determination.
We are talking animals that hadn’t really had a lot of human handling, so this was not an easy job but something Lee relished.
He obviously was the man for the job!
With horses being needed for the front, bullocks were the next best thing to move supplies.
Lee also had his own horse to look after named Skipper – a rather stocky horse with not much of a tail, but strong and powerful.
Like most horses from the war, Skipper did not return to New Zealand.
On his return from the war, Lee took over the farrier business from his former employer and he trained trotters in his spare time.
Lee married his wife Lillian and had a son (Gordon) and three daughters (Eileen, Beryl, and Loma).
His daughter Beryl became the first woman to be granted an open professional trainer’s licence.
Lee purchased a 10.5-acre property in Cambridge, where he established his trotting stables, which regularly turned out winners.
Auto Prince was the best horse Lee owned.
He won five races on end before breaking down, after which he enjoyed some success as a sire.
Lee was often seen lifting the silver at the trots and his trusty weather-beaten hat was never far from his side, it was his trademark.
Not long after he settled in Cambridge, Lee purchased a blacksmith business from McMillan Bros in Kirkwood St, which he operated until it was taken over by his son Gordon in 1953.
Lee became the blacksmith in the area, he was highly regarded when it came to shoeing and it was nothing for him to shoe four draught horses every morning before breakfast so that a team would not be held up to do their day’s work.
He made all his own horseshoes and was affectionately known as a man who shod horses because he loved them.
Eventually, a new blacksmith shop was built in 1953 at the Cambridge trotting track and the blacksmiths were Gordon Lee and his son Ross, who started working for his father in 1974.
Ross eventually left his farriering behind to become a paramedic.
A book about Lee’s daughter, My Life: Special Memories as related by Beryl Lee, was compiled by a Hospice Waikato volunteer life reviewer and given to the family in June 2010. Togo Lee’s grandson (and Beryl’s nephew) Ross supplied me with a copy.
From the various, photos, and memories written about Beryl,I can see Togo Lee was a man with high principles, hard work was just second nature to him, loved his family, his horses were his life and he was a very humble man.
Among those old photos that had been filed away was a card sent from the war office, “for gallant and distinguished services in the Field”.
One of the lines read, “I have it in command from the King to record His Majesty’s high appreciation of the services rendered.”
The card was signed by Winston Churchill.
That says it all.