When the shelter at Aubers Ridge in northeast France was excavated, the rescue party found a gold cigarette case beside Wilding's remains, a souvenir given to the tennis star the year before in the Riviera by his doubles partner, American Craig Biddle.
And wandering amid the rubble, anxious for his master the soldiers retrieved Samson, Wilding's Irish setter dog.
At the age of 31, the almost filmic life of Captain Anthony Frederick Wilding - the easy charmer whose female tennis followers were said to swoon when he played, the carefree motorcyclist who powered around Europe on a 400cc machine, the devoted son who wrote to his mother Julia in Christchurch: "It's a bad business, war" - was over.
The second of five children, Tony Wilding was raised in comfort. The family's Opawa home had two tennis courts - an asphalt one for the cold Canterbury winters, and a grass court for summer. His father, Frederick, a lawyer, pushed his son at sport. By 14, when he took up tennis, Tony had hit a century at cricket and was captain of the football team. Father and son played doubles together, reaching the national finals on one occasion.
Behind Tony's success was a gruelling physical fitness regime, helped with advice from Bob Fitzsimmons, the former world heavyweight champion, the so called "freckled wonder" who learned to box growing up in Timaru.
At 19 Wilding enrolled in law at Cambridge University in England. Tennis however was beginning to dominate his life. The canny student started charging fees for games and though his family wanted him to carve out a legal career, Wilding's energies were devoted to his chosen sport.
His success and style gave him entree to the smart set. He was a regular at French Riviera tournaments, rubbing shoulders with the daughters of Europeans nobles and British politicians. His travelling style was casual, and he leaned on friends and hosts to borrow clothes. He had, it was reported, a presence that sets hearts a-flutter: so many women fainted during Wilding's defeat of American Maurice McLoughlin at the 1913 Wimbledon final that they had to be "laid out on the court beside the roller until they could be removed".
The fun stopped when war broke out. Wilding was in the US, half of the Australasian team with Norman Brookes in their successful Davis Cup clash. The New Zealander dashed back to England and sought the advice of Winston Churchill. Wilding got a commission with the Royal Marines before transferring to the Intelligence Corps, where his familiarity with Europe's roads proved an asset.
The enterprising soldier knocked around France and Flanders, and used his engineering skills to mount a small gun on a trailer which could be pulled by a Rolls-Royce armoured car and remain intact over rough ground.
At times he got away to visit his actress friend Maxine Elliott, who was distributing clothes and provisions to displaced families from a barge on the Belgium canal network.
On the evening before he died, Wilding and fellow officers dined on pea soup and roast lamb, washed down with white wine, before he took his vehicle and gun to the front. He wrote to his mother. "If all goes well," he declared, "I think my little battery will do really great work."
After a simple service on May 10, witnessed by his guncrew, Wilding was laid to rest, his grave site in an adjacent orchard adorned with a cross made from a packing case. Samson, his faithful dog, was shipped home to his family in Christchurch.
*Sources include naval historian Gerry Wright
100 Kiwi stories runs every Monday and Thursday. To read the first 71 stories in this series click here.
