James Grierson

Lieutenant-General Sir James Moncrieff Grierson, (27 January 1859 – 17 August 1914) was a British soldier.

Life

He was born in 1859 the son of George Moncrieff Grierson and his wife Allison Lyon Walker.

Grierson was commissioned into the Royal Artillery in October 1877.

He served in the Egyptian War including the actions at Kassassin and Tel el Kebir, as Deputy Assistant Quartermaster General with the Indian contingent in 1882. He was Deputy Assistant Adjutant and Quartermaster General for the Sudan expedition and was involved in actions at Suakin, Hasheen and Tamai in 1885. He was Deputy Assistant Quartermaster General for 2nd Brigade during the Hazara expedition in 1888. He was appointed Deputy Assistant Adjutant General, Intelligence, at Army Headquarters in 1890 and then, after being seconded for service on the staff, became brigade major for the Royal Artillery at Aldershot from 1895 to 1896 when he became military attaché in Berlin acquiring what Sir John French later described as "an intimate knowledge of the German army."

He served in China during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, and later the same year in the Second Boer War in South Africa when he was made an assistant adjutant general in February 1900. Grierson was in charge of army baggage during General Roberts’s march on Bloemfontein.

After returning from the war he became Assistant Quartermaster General for the 2nd Army Corps and Chief Staff Officer to Sir Evelyn Wood, commanding the corps; and was promoted to the substantive rank of colonel on 28 October 1901. In early 1902 he was ordered for temporary duty in the Remount Department. Later that year he returned to his position in the 2nd Army corps, where he was appointed a Brigadier-General on the Staff and Chief Staff Officer of the corps from 4 September 1902. He was promoted to major general in February 1904.