It was the last cricket match of the summer.
The lengthening shadows and the chill wind over Easter 1915 showed that autumn had arrived.
The lack of spectators at Carisbrook for the two-day match between Otago and Southland was another indication, though many young men had already left for the war.
The game was in aid of Belgian relief funds and was the last first-class match to be played in Dunedin until the last year of the war, in 1918.
Andrew Moncrief Given would not have minded the lack of spectators or warmth.
He had had a good game, his first and as it turned out, his only first-class match.
When Southland batted a second time and held on for a predictable draw, such was the nature of two-day matches, Given had claimed three wickets for 32 runs.
"He was bowling very well,'' the Evening Star noted.
A couple of weeks later, Given said goodbye to father Andrew, mother Isabella and sisters Ethel, Mabel, Vera and Irene and headed for Melbourne where, in early July, he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force.
He sailed for Egypt and arrived just in time for a week or two on Gallipoli before the evacuation.
Given was then transferred to the AIFs 60th Battalion, given more training, and went to France.
Within three weeks of arriving in Marseilles from Alexandria, Andy Given was dead.
He was one of the hundreds of victims of the first major Australian action on the Western Front, what was supposed to be a feint to draw German attention away from the Somme.
It was a one-sided frontal assault involving men with rifles out in the open against concealed men with machineguns and it became the most grievous day for Australia in battle.
The commander of the brigade of which the 60th Battalion was a part, General "Pompey'' Elliott, was said to have wept when he watched the pitifully few survivors return in the morning.
This was Australia's military nadir.
This was Fromelles (sometimes called Fleurbaix), a tragedy that senior military men at the time and historians since agreed should not have happened.
The Fifth Division had 5533 casualties, of whom 1917 were killed or died of wounds, 3146 wounded and 470 taken prisoner.
Such precise figures could be ascertained only after months of investigation.
In the immediate aftermath, when the 60th Battalion roll was called, only 106 men of the 887 who had attacked the night before were there to answer to their names. Among the silent was Andy Given.
Jimmy Downing, a sergeant who later shared a legal practice with Elliott, wrote about this dismal day after the war: "Hundreds were mown down in the flicker of an eyelid, like great rows of teeth knocked from a comb - it was the Charge of the Light Brigade once more, but more terrible, more hopeless.''
Given was not the only Dunedin man to die that day; indeed, not even the only New Zealand first-class cricketer.
Australian triumphs and disasters in the war were not just for Australians; the same for New Zealand and New Zealanders.
Definitive figures can't be known, but it's estimated that at least 1500 New Zealanders served in the AIF and a similar number of Australians in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force.
Fromelles was a disaster that took time to mature in the Antipodean consciousness.
That was partly because of war censorship and the first details were not published until 1920; but also partly because of the disproportionate number of men who were missing after July 19, 1916. For every missing man, an inquiry had to be held.
That meant assembling officers to head the inquiries and witnesses to testify at them.
In the circumstances, many of the officers and witnesses had been wounded themselves so it was months before some sort of finality could be reached.
But even then, uncertainty persisted.
In Andy Given's case, an inquiry the following August, just on 13 months after the battle, determined he was missing, killed in action.
A private, Thomas Killy, said he saw Given killed.
"He was already wounded and was crawling back like me when a shell killed him - his body was picked up after lying out there for 36 hours.''
Five years later, Given's father Andrew (his mother Isabella had died in 1919) wrote to Base Records in Melbourne asking for the whereabouts of his son's grave.
There wasn't one.
He was told the Graves Registration Units had not been able to find where Andy Given breathed his last.
"The surface of the whole battlefield area has been searched six times and some places 20 times since the Armistice,'' the officer in charge replied, "but it is possible that bodies will continue to be found for years as the work of the reconstruction progresses''.
The other New Zealand cricketer was Albert Ernest Pratt, who had played for Auckland against Hawkes Bay.
A lieutenant, he was killed while leading his men in the assault.
"He was shot through the heart,'' a letter home said, "and died instantly''.
Another Dunedin-raised man, Clark Maxwell Gray, known as Max or "Dolly'' for a popular Boer War tune, was also among the missing.
His father was a school teacher who had been at George Street Normal, then went on to other schools and ended up at Presbyterian Ladies College in Melbourne.
Young Max went to Scotch College and signed up when he was still a schoolboy, so required his father's permission to enlist, which was given.
Comments in Gray's Red Cross files were contradictory about what happened to him (one saying he was a prisoner) but all became clear when another Scotch old boy wrote to the chool magazine.
He was William Scurry, himself noted in Anzac lore.
He was the private on Gallipoli who devised the self-firing rifle to make it appear to the Turks that Australians were still there after the evacuation.
He wrote that he last saw Max Gray leading his men toward the German positions.
"Then later on in the night, as we stood still among those guns, we heard that somewhere in the front he had dropped - he died as, if it is so decreed, we would all choose to die, in front of his men, facing east.''
The toll of battle is still being counted at Fromelles.
In 2009, a mass grave of victims who had been buried by the Germans was found.
It contained about 250 bodies, Australian, New Zealand and British; the gruesome task of identification and reburial continues.
DNA has been taken from teeth and bones and compared with that of descendants.
More than half have been positively identified. It is believed there are others who died at Fromelles still to be found.
- Ron Palenski
