(31 Dec. 1919-8 June 1944), murdered soldier. (Douglas Grant) Parents: Joseph Paul Grant (Joseph P. Grant, Joe Grant), and his wife Ina. Joseph P. Grant (b. Alexandria, GC, 23 March 1884; d. in hospital at Hornpayne, Ont., 14 Nov. 1968; buried at Oba, Ont.), the father of the subject of this biography, was a veteran of the Boer War and WWI, a construction worker, policeman at North Bay, and a game warden in northern Ont., and in his earlier years achieved considerable notice as a champion boxer. He is said to have been Canada’s middleweight champion in 1908. In 1945, Joseph P. and Ina Grant were living at Oba in northern Ontario, northwest of Timmins. They had been at Oba since at least 1940.

     Douglas Grant, the subject of the present article, attended school for “a short time” in Alexandria, residing with his aunt, Mrs Max Seger. He is recorded as having attended high school for three years–though this may not have been in Alexandria. When he joined the Canadian armed forces in June 1940, at Port Arthur, he gave his trade as miner, and his address as Geraldton, Ont., the name of the post office being Little Long Lac. He was sent overseas in Oct. 1941, embarking at Halifax, arriving at Liverpool. He was one of the Canadian soldiers who arrived in France on D-Day, 6 June, the first day of the allied invasion of France. Two days later, Douglas Grant, who was a bombardier in the 3rd Anti-Tank Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery, was one of 40 Canadian soldiers who were seated in a group by their German captors in a field near the village of Fontenay-le-Pesnel in Normandy on the evening of 8 June, and attacked by machine pistol fire. Five of the 40 managed to escape, but Grant was killed. He is buried in the Beny-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery, at Reviers, France, 15 kilometres from Caen. His brother Clifford J. Grant was killed in action a little later in Aug. 1944 in the same war. Another brother, Martin Grant, had by the end of the European war been “twice seriously wounded.” Douglas Grant was at first reported to be missing, and it was not until the spring of 1945 that Douglas Grant’s father was informed of the true circumstances of his son’s death. At this time, a Requiem High Mass was sung in St. Finnan’s Cathedral, Alexandria, for the repose of Douglas Grant’s soul. The subject of this present biography and his brother who was killed in action are presumably the Douglas and Clifford Grant whose names appear on the war memorial, Alexandria. Douglas Grant was unmarried. He was a Roman Catholic.

     Howard Margolian, one of the historians of the tragedy, believes that SS Lt. Col. Wilhelm Mohnke was responsible for the massacre. Mohnke, who was still living at the time Margolian’s book was published, was a prisoner in the Soviet Union for ten years after the war, and after he returned to Germany attempts by the Canadians to prosecute him for the 1944 killings came to nothing.

     The somewhat similar and tragic story of a Cornwall man is told in Gregory Charles Pollard, Missing: the Story of Lance Corporal George G. Pollard Murdered at the Hands of German Soldiers under the Command of Major-General Kurt Meyer of the 25th Panzer Grenadier Regiment (Cornwall, Ont., 2003).

Glengarry News 15 Sept. 1944, 8 June 1945 (QF) * service record, NAC * information from Commonwealth War Graves Commission * Howard Margolian, Conduct Unbecoming: the Story of the Murder of Canadian Prisoners of War in Normandy (University of Toronto Press, 1998) *Joseph P. (Joe) Grant: biog. of by Angus H. McDonell for Glengarry Sports Hall of Fame, GN 20 May 1981 (portrait); boxes at Cobalt, GN 25 Aug. 1916