ANTHONY WILDING

Otago Witness, Issue 3245, 24 May 1916, Page 29

ANTHONY WILDING

HIS LIFE AND DEATH. AN INTERESTING BIOGRAPHY. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, March 24. The lato Now Zealand tennis champion has been dead less than a year, but his friend, Mr A. Wailis Myers (the well-known tennis player) has already produced a very adequate biography and appreciation, which has just been published by Messrs Hodder and Stoughton, at the price of 5s net. In writing his book, Mr Myers confesses to having a. threefold purpose: " The first, to preserve some record of a strenuous life, of which the final act was its chief glory; the second, to offer a small tribute to New Zealand, the Overseas Dominion which bred Captain Wilding and many another volunteer who has fallen in the great war; the third, to suggest that the cult of sport fostered in this country has proved in its discipline of body and mind a material advantage to a nation suddenly called to arms." The biography is very interesting throughout, but possibly the greatest interest at present is in the chapters which deal with Wilding's part in the war, and the manner in which he came by his death. He hated war in the abstract, and in the letters which he wrote from the front he continually expressed his abhorrence of what was going on around him, but this feeling did not prevent him from throwing his whole tremendous enthusiasm into his own particular job. It was on the suggestion of Mr Churchill that he applied for n temporary commission in the Royal Marines. This he obtained in October, 1914, and he shortly afterwards crossed the Channel in the more congenial capacity of motor driver in the Headquarters Intelligence Corps. There he lived to a great extent with the naval flying officers, for whom ho had an unbounded admiration. By and bye he was attached to Commander Samson's naval airwing, " with armoured motor cars as a side show." The armoured cars, as we all know, got very little of their particular class of work, but Wilding was not to be baulked. After seeing the armoured cars off to the Dardanelles, he joined the Duke of Westminster's squadron of Rolls-Royce cars, which pottered about ail alo.ig the line from In Bassee to Dunkirk. On one night the Duke and Wilding, on an armoured lorry, lired 50 rounds of high explosives at the 'enemy's parapets, and demolished, at a range of 500yds several cottages, in which Germans were entrenched with machine guns. The following month Wilding hid a small command of his own—two wagons, each with a 25 h.p. Seabrook, weighing about eight tons, and a powerful Mercedes car belonging to his American tennis friend (Craig Riddle). He had under him 30 men, one junior officer, three threepounder guns, one Rolls-Royce armoured car, and three machine guns, and they attached themselves to the Indian Corps. Wilding himself devised a new trailer with two wheels to run oehind a light armoured car and carry a three-pound gun. It was very mobile over rough ground, and did excellent work

THE FATAL SHELL. To bring his armament into action Wilding had to do a great, deal of reconnaissance at. night, for it was quite out of the question to bring armoured cars under close lire of the German trenches without knowing thoroughly the roads by which it could retire. It was on April 19 that the trailer (completed) was brought down from Dunkirk and inspected by Sir Douglas Haig and General Anderson. Three days later a well-known "sniper's house had to be demolished, and the cars, coming forward for this nurpose in the dark, were hopelessly held up by getting stuck in a shell-hole. It wa3 almost dawn before they could carry out their mission, and then, at a range of 350yds, they poured 40 three-pound shells into the house, and returned at full speed to Lestrem under heavy riflo fire. General Southey personally congratulated Wilding on this success. Writing of the affair to a friend, Wilding said : " The general wrote mo a letter of Congrats., but that is my only little .gallery play so far. I really hate war, and wish with all my heart the dam thing would end, but how or when God knows." On the 2nd May Wilding received word of his promotion to be captain, and a few days later ho got instructions to take part in the big attack of May, again to destroy machine gun positions, near Port Arthur. They made their preliminary reconnaissance under very heavy shell fire, and returned from the trenches splashed from head to foot with mud. On the night before he wrote to a friend: " For really the first time in seven months and a-half I have a job on hand which is likely to end in gun, I and the whole outfit being blown to hell. However, it is a sporting chance, and if we succeed will help our infantry no end. . . . What I write to you about is this: If my trailer and I get forciblyput out of action, I ask you. . . ." (A few instructions about disposing of his property.) That evening, at the advance depot, Wilding enjoyed, in a ruined cottage, what he described as the best dinner he had eaten since he had been at the front —green pea soup, roast lamb, fruit, and white, wine. Afterwards ho and his junior officer went to Windy Corner to load up the car with ammunition, and then they parted, each going by a separate route to his station, and Wilding and his C'.P.O. walking in front of the trailer by turns, for they could not have lights. Arrived at the trench, Wilding instructed the gunlayer as to the emplacement, the gun being 4ft above tho parapet. He spent the night in a dugout with two officers of the 4th Suffolks —Milburn and Barnes — whom he had often met on the tennis court. Early next morning he proceeded to his gun in slacks and low shoes, "looking for all the world," Milburn says, "as if he were about to pop down in his car to Wimbledon." They opened fire at once, and continued in action for 10 hours, only ceasing now and again when shrapnel burst close over them, or the sandbags close to the muzzlo became ignited. Wilding observed and directed the fire from the gun platform in tho trench, all tho time under heavy counter shelling. During the day he heard that tho armoured ear had been hit and stuck in a shell hole, and he turned his own gun on the enmy's works that were shelling the car. At 4.30 p.m., having fired 400 rounds, his job was finished, and he was looking for somewhere to lie down. He was warned not to go into a dugout beside tho gun emplacement, but ho crawled in nevertheless, and within a quarter of an hour the end came. A heavy shell exploded on the roof of the dugout, and when the rescue party arrived they found two privates killed, Lieutenant Pretty still breathing, and finally, from a mass of iron, earth, and sandbags, all that remained of Captain Wilding. He had been kelled instantly, and his face was not damaged by the shell. Lying in the wreckage, blown out of his pocket, was a gold cigarette case presented to him by Craig-Biddle after the doubles at the Riviera in 1914.