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DD1 4HN - University of Dundee

Born in Dundee, in 1876 Joseph Johnston Lee was almost 40 at the outbreak of War.

Despite this, Lee enlisted in the 4th Battalion of the Black Watch in 1914, eventually rising to the rank of Sergeant. During this time he sent poems and drawings back to Scotland. Eventually his work was collected in two books of poetry, Ballads of Battle and Work-a-Day Warriors.

In 1917 he gained a commission as a second lieutenant in the 10th Battalion of the King's Royal Rifle Corps. Later that year he was reported to be missing in action. In fact Lee had been captured and became a prisoner of war in Germany. His time spent as a POW was later depicted in his book A Captive in Carlsruhe.

During the conflict, Lee's reputation as a war poet once ranked alongside those of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. His poem ‘The Green Grass’ was acclaimed by John Buchan as one of the best war poems he had read. However while the works of Owen and Sassoon grew in popularity, Lee's fame waned and he fell into obscurity after the war.

When he returned to Britain, Lee moved to London and married Miss Dorothy Barrie, a viola player. The couple settled in Epsom and Lee became sub-editor on the News Chronicle. He also studied at the Slade School of Art, and though he continued sketching he did not resume writing poetry.

He returned to Dundee in 1944, and died there in 1949.

Image courtesy of The University of Dundee Museum

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