Military Service and Death
At the outbreak of World War I, Tony Wilding joined the Royal Marines. He was gazetted a second lieutenant in October 1914 and attached to an intelligence unit. At the end of October he joined the Royal Naval Armoured Car Division in the battlefields of France where he had three guns and armoured cars under his command. In March 1915 Wilding was posted to a new squadron made up of armoured Rolls Royce cars and was ranked a lieutenant. Before long the squadron was moved near the front and Wilding was promoted to captain. He was killed in action on 9 May 1915 during the Battle of Aubers Ridge at Neuve-Chapelle, France when a shell landed close to the dug-out he was sheltering in.
Captain Tony Wilding was buried the next day, but later reinterred at the Rue-des-Berceaux Military Cemetery in Richebourg-L'Avoue, Pas-de-Calais, France. He had been dating and was about to marry Broadway star Maxine Elliott, a woman fifteen years his senior.
In 1978, he was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. Wilding Park, the principal venue for tennis in Christchurch, New Zealand, is named in his honour.
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