Herbert Jackson Wishart was born on 23 May 1892 in Penrith, Cumberland. He was the only child of William Jackson Wishart, a local hatter and hosier, and his wife, Margaret Elizabeth Eddy. In 1911 the family lived at 43 King Street where young Herbert worked as an assistant in his father’s shop. 

By the start of the war, Herbert was working as a draper and enlisted under the Derby Scheme at the Drill Hall in Penrith on 10 December 1915. At the time he was recorded at being 6.5ft tall, 155 lbs in weight and possessing good physical development. He joined the Royal Army Medical Corps and following six-months experience at the Penrith Auxiliary Hospital; embarked in Southampton on board the Hospital Ship Dover Castle on 24 June 1916. He sailed for Salonika, arriving on 9 July, and joined the staff of the 38th General Hospital as a nursing orderly on 6 August. During December, excerpts from a letter home written by Herbert found their way into the pages of the Penrith Observer in which he reports meeting a Serbian patient who spoke perfect English and at one time had lived locally. He also tells of another Serbian soldier who fought through the Balkan Wars and the present one and who turned out to be a woman.

Unsurprisingly, like many thousands of servicemen and women serving in Salonika, Herbert fell ill with malaria during early 1917 – spending a month at the 4th Canadian General Hospital himself. On 16 March 1918, he joined the 78th Field Ambulance which formed part of the 26th Division and with whom he served for the remainder of the war. Following the cessation of hostilities with Bulgaria at the end of September 1918, Herbert moved with the Division into formerly occupied territory and found himself being awarded the Medaille Berbatie si Credenta from the Roumanian Government for his work during the occupation of Dobruja. He eventually sailed for the UK on 3 May 1919 and was discharged from service on 14 June having been away for three years 187 days.

In 1920, Herbert married Helen Rudd, and three children were born of the marriage. Following his father’s sudden death in 1926, he took over his shop on King Street and worked as a gentleman’s outfitter until retirement. He died on 17 September 1970 in the village of Overton near Morecombe.

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