John Ashe-Everest was the son of Frederick James Ashe-Everest, a surveyor and valuer, and Mary Amelia Hall. He was born in Wandsworth in 1894. In 1901, at the age of 6, John was living with his widowed father and younger siblings Mildred and Frederick and a housekeeper in Battersea. By the age of sixteen, in 1911, he was boarding as an apprentice cashier at Whiteley’s department store in Paddington.
On 13 December 1912 he sailed from London to Dominica in the West Indies, and in Epiphany term 1914 he matriculated at Codrington College, Barbados, where he won a First in both parts 1 and 2 of the B.A. degree (in litteris antiquis). Codrington College was at this time affiliated with Durham University. His B.A. was awarded in February 1916 in his absence, as by then he had returned to England and was on military service.
Ashe-Everest enlisted as Private 22127 in the 7th Battalion of the Wiltshire Regiment at Sutton Verney, living at the time at Torquay, Devon, and went to France in September 1915. The battalion was sent to Salonica in November 1915 as part of the 79th Brigade, 26th Division, and they fought the Bulgarian army near the Macedonian frontier. A fierce attack at Doiran on the 2nd Bulgarian Brigade preceded by heavy artillery bombardment from both sides on 24 April could not be sustained, and the British were finally repulsed with many casualties. The 7th Battalion war diary (transcript) describes the fighting in which all the officers and eight non-commissioned officers were killed, together with many others, including John Ashe-Everest of C Company.
Private John Ashe-Everest is commemorated on the Doiran Memorial and the rolls of honour and memorials of Durham University, 7th Battalion Wiltshire Regiment, and Warminster.