John Wishart was born on the 25th of November 1896 at 32, Bothwell Street in Edinburgh. He was the eldest of three children born to John Wishart, a postman from the parish of Cults in Fife, and his wife, Margaret Heron McKenna. 

At the age of four, he lived with his mother and two younger sisters at 5, Beaumont Place in the Newington District of Edinburgh. It’s unclear where his father was at this time - and ten years later when the family resided at 93, Morrison Street in Edinburgh, he was still missing. However, it's likely that by this time, he'd deserted his family and emigrated to South Africa, where he died in 1943. 

John enlisted with the 1/6th Battalion, Royal Scots, in November 1912 and, during the early part of the war, would have been engaged with Scottish Coastal Defences.

At some point, a draft of men from John's unit was attached to the 1/4th Battalion [Queen’s Edinburgh Rifles], who assembled at Larbert, Stirlingshire in May 1915 and entrained for Liverpool on the 22nd, where they boarded the R.M.S. Empress of Britain and set sail for the Dardanelles. By the 28th, the ship had reached Gibraltar and three days later, Malta.

John’s unit arrived at Alexandria on the 3rd of June and was given five days rest in Abukir before re-embarking for Mudros Bay on the Island of Lemnos. By mid-June, the battalion had landed at Cape Helles on the Gallipoli peninsula and was engaged in digging communication trenches as a means to acclimatise the men to the hostile environment and ‘tone up their flabby muscles’.

The battalion received orders on the 19th of June to proceed to Gully Ravine, where they assembled in front-line trenches in the early hours of the 28th in preparation for an assault on Turkish lines at Fir Tree Spur. As the morning wore on and the heat intensified, John and his comrades must have been suffering considerably in their serge uniforms, and at 10:45 am, dressed in full marching kit, they eventually went over the top.

John had taken on the role of company signaler and lost his life during the battle. The circumstances of his death are unknown, though it’s possible that he was amongst those who were later described as ‘falling in bundles’ before the enemy machine guns. By the day’s end, a witness recalled that:

"...a blood red sun had fallen over the peninsula where the scrub was burning fiercely. A bloody sunset closing a day of bloodiness." 

John’s body was never recovered or later identified, and he was officially recorded as being killed in action a year later on the 26th of August 1916.

His life is commemorated on the Helles Memorial in Turkey.