“You may kill me, but you can never frighten me.”
The last words of George Grant as he faced a firing squad of twenty Mongols (and perhaps one Russian). George Grant died along with the four Chinese men he refused to abandon to the lineup of executioners.
That summer of 1913 George Grant left Peking at the behest of the Chinese government to track down problems with the telegraph system in Mongolia. Effective far-reaching communications had become essential to the expansion of global capital and to enable empires maintain links with their outlying colonies and territories and the telegraph provided an ear to what was happening in these areas often distant from the seat of power. From the 1840s telegraphic networks brought the world closer together. Several European states developed their own systems including Russia, erecting telegraph lines across its vast region from west to east with an intention to connect to Japan and China via underwater cables. But it was a Danish business, The Great Northern China and Japan Extension Telegraph Company that undertook this work, from 1870.
In 1870 George Grant was not even a glint in his parents’ eyes for he was born at the village of Skelmorlie in North Ayrshire in Scotland in 1876 to Jane and John Grant, a railway carrier (no mention of his mother’s occupation.) The boy joined the 11th Glasgow Company of the Boys Brigade – a Christian club for boys started in and popular in Scotland (which preceded and influenced the creation of the Boy Scouts.) Following his death the Brigade struck a medal, the George Grant Medal for any activity chosen by Brigaders, and presented annually. I have no idea if it still exists.
Between then and the early years of the twentieth century (possibly towards the end of the nineteenth) Grant sailed to China where he worked as a telegraphist. For a time he was employed by the Eastern Extension Australia and China Telegraph Company (GB) before transferring to the Danish Great Northern Telegraph Company.
China was at the time brutally resisting Mongolian independence. The situation between Mongolia and China was extremely dangerous with atrocities being perpetrated on both sides. In June 1913 the superintendent of telegraph in Peking, Henningsen, a Dane, his fellow countryman, Langeback, and Grant from Scotland along with Chinese colleagues, described as three merchants and a servant, set out at the behest of the Chinese government to ascertain damage to telegraph lines, poles and stations inside Mongolia because of concerns from telegraph staffers of damage and missing supplies.
The major threats to the lines came at two points – in the vicinity of the Gobi Desert in northern China and southern Mongolia – at Pang Kian Station. There Grant remained with three Chinese men and their servant while Langback and his assistants went on to inspect the situation at Tuerin. Henningsen then returned to Peking. Grant reported the loss of a caravan of supplies, stolen by Mongolian raiders, and he was given permission to obtain replacement goods from Kalgan. On 17th June he left in search of these items. Five days later Reuter’s Kalgan correspondent telegraphed that a foreigner, three Chinese merchants and a servant had been captured a couple of days earlier by Mongols some 80 miles from Pang Kian.
Immediately a search party was organised by George Grant’s close friend, Jacob Henningsen, who was accompanied by inevitably nameless Chinese and a fellow Dane, Dr Wolff and an English journalist called Giles. They set off from Peking on 3 July, on ponies instead of camels since the Mongols might be more acquisitive of their camels, enquiring of everyone they encountered the whereabouts of the missing Grant. One night a group of eight Mongols rode into their camp. The Europeans seized their rifles and questioned them to ascertain if they were friends or enemies. Believing them to be friendly enough Henningsen agreed to return with them to their camp in his desperate effort to trace Grant. It was decided Wolff and Giles should continue with their journey. A description of George Grant was shared with the Mongolians and he was told that
“Such a man is at the camp of the Great Chief. He has joined us, and will not leave.”
A full day’s ride into the hills took Henningsen close to the Chief’s camp by early evening. It was surrounded by other camps with several hundred men protecting the area. At one camp Henningsen was interrogated as it was suspected he was a Chinese government spy. He was ordered to send for Wolff and Giles and in his message he warned them to be careful as the situation was precarious. They too were closely questioned when they arrived at the camp and confirmed to the Mongols the man they were looking for was about thirty-six years old, short and sturdy, bald-headed with a full red beard. They were told that such a man lived in another camp.
Henningsen, Wolff, Giles and their party were escorted by Mongol warriors to the camp of their Great Chief who was about 45 years old and quite friendly. He told the Europeans he had received a telegram instructing Grant’s release but explained to Henningsen the foreigner in question volunteered to stay in the camp, as a commander of 50 men. Henningsen was at liberty to ask if he wanted to leave but must not try to persuade him. When the foreigner was brought before Henningsen he discovered a man of vaguely similar appearance to Grant but not a Scotsman at all. This European was a Russian who told the Dane he’d come across Grant who had been very kind to him and allowed him to stay with him at Pang Kian.
The Russian was barefoot when the Europeans found him and when asked if he had boots he showed them several pairs along with his clothes and a saddle. Henningsen recognised the saddle as the one he had given Grant when they set off from Peking. The Russian claimed the saddle and other items belonging to Grant had been taken by Mongols. Looking around Henningsen also recognised the cart George Grant used for the journey. Inside were many of his things including his pipe and tobacco pouch. A furious Henningsen shouted at the Russian and Mongols and threatened to report them to their Great Chief but he was warned if he did his own party’s lives would be at risk – that Grant was dead and he and his party should “go away in peace” or risk being killed. They were told that if Grant had done so his life would have been spared. Some claimed it had been the Russian who had shot Grant but the Europeans did not believe them for the Russian appeared kindly – a peasant who travelled widely across the Far East. (It transpired that a Russian government attempt to secure the release of George Grant came too late to save him.)
Grant was an enthusiastic photographer and his camera had been confiscated by his captors who offered to let him go without it – and his Chinese colleagues. Grant refused to agree and argued for the lives of the Chinese men he had travelled with. When this was denied he stood in front of the firing squad, a group of around twenty men, and laughed at them – at the number of them it took to tie him up – at their cowardice as he put it. The last words spoken by George Grant the small Scotsman with a bushy red beard to his killers were “You may kill me, but you can never frighten me.”
As for the Russian he told Henningsen he had been captured by some Chinese troops, stripped, shot in three places and left for dead. He was saved by chance when a party of Mongols found him and nursed him back to health at which point he decided he would stay with them and
“kill every Chinese that comes my way – I shall rid the earth of a few Chinese before I die.”
So was the Russian behind the killing of Grant and the Chinese men George Grant tried to protect? We don’t know. Grant was said to be popular with those who knew him – popularity that aroused distrust among Mongols in the area.
Reports of George Grant’s death found their way into Britain’s newspapers. In its inimitable way Aberdeen Press and Journal contrived to describe the red-bearded Scot as an Englishman (I suppose Ayrshire is quite far south from Aberdeen.)
The Grant family’s MP in North Ayrshire, Captain Duncan Campbell* asked a question in the UK parliament regarding compensation and in a written answer was told by the foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, that the matter of compensation had been referred to the British Charge d’Affairs at Peking. In China its government said it recognised Grant’s loyalty to their people and arranged a ‘handsome’ payment to his mother back in Scotland.
Telegraph, the first electrical telecommunications system, provided a messaging service for nearly two hundred years, from the 1840s. Their essential nature to global as well as local connections made them a target for attack not only by Mongolians who regarded the Chinese network across their territory as an incursion on their independence but by various individuals and groups including Russian revolutionaries who as part of their struggle against Tsarism in 1906 cut the lines connecting Peking with Irkutsk in Siberia that fed into European Russia. This line was operated by the company Grant worked for when he died, the Danish Great Northern Telegraph Company that, incidentally, had telegraph stations at Aberdeen and Newcastle. The nature of the great telegraph network criss-crossing often remote areas sometimes the subject of national rivalries created dangerous working environments for employees such as George Grant. Their bravery in undertaking this work is unquestionable.
*Captain Campbell was injured at the Battle of Ypres in the First World War a year after George Grant’s death and his question in the Commons. His injuries included the loss of an arm and following his return to military service he was further wounded by a mine and as a consequence died in 1916.
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