William Gordon Wishart was born on the 22nd of September 1881 at 10 Union Street East in Arbroath. He was the youngest of seven children born to John Shepherd Wishart, a local flaxmill worker, and his wife, Jane Clark Swan.

By the age of eighteen, William was working as a gardener and had also joined the 2nd Volunteer Battalion, Royal Highlanders - a local unit headquartered in Arbroath.

On the 15th of January 1900, he visited the recruiting office in Dundee and enlisted with the Royal Field Artillery. In a medical examination, he was described as being 5 ft 7 ¾” in height with a fresh complexion, blue eyes and brown hair. He had a burn mark on his left wrist and a mole on his right shoulder blade. Two days later, William arrived at the artillery depot in Woolwich and was posted to 112 Battery RFA at the Military Barracks in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. 

William remained with the 112th until the 29th of October 1901, when he was transferred to the 62nd Battery and sent with his new unit to India. William served overseas until the 6th of  February 1908, after which he returned to the UK and became a Section B reservist (changing to Section A on the 8th of July.) Twelve months later, on the 9th of February 1909, he reverted to Section B and was eventually discharged from the army on the 14th of January 1912, having completed his first period of service.

On the 29th of April,1908 - shortly after returning from India - he found work as a hose-pipe weaver in Dundee and there he married a confectioner named Jessie Alexander Myles. A daughter named Violet was born on the 9th of February 1909, and by 1911 the family were living at 10 Maule Street in Monifieth. It was at this address on the 30th of March 1911 that William’s wife died suddenly of valvular endocarditis.

Within a year, William had left Scotland for Manchester, where he lived in the Pendleton area of Salford, working for F. Reddaway & Co. - a manufacturer of cotton belting, India rubber goods and canvas hose.

He met, and subsequently married, a widow named Mary Ann Corfield (neé Nixon) on the 28th of September 1912 at St. Barnabus Church, and six months later, a son named William was born on the 31st of March 1913.

Tragically, young Violet (the daughter that William had with his first wife Jessie) died in Manchester in early 1914 - and in the same year, following the outbreak of war, William was swiftly recalled for active service.

He left for France with the Royal Field Artillery on the 11th of March 1915 and travelled onwards to Mesopotamia, where he joined the 3rd Divisional Ammunition Column. A year after arriving in this theatre of war, whilst sailing up the Tigris River with a convoy, in an unrecorded accident, William drowned. His date of death being the 1st of March, 1916.

William is commemorated on both the Basra Memorial in Iraq (Panel 3 and 60) and the Arbroath War Memorial in Scotland.