He was short, wiry, and came from the dusty outskirts of Clermont in rural Queensland. Half Chinese, all Australian. Quiet by nature, deadly by skill. His name was Billy Sing, and in the trenches of Gallipoli, his name became legend.
Before the war, Billy’s father gave him one bullet at a time to hunt kangaroos. There were no second chances. You hit your mark - or you went hungry. That quiet discipline followed Billy to the battlefield, where he became one of the deadliest snipers in the ANZAC ranks.
While artillery thundered and men charged, Billy lay still... watching, waiting. His war wasn’t loud. It came in the pause of breath, the twitch of a finger, the silence that followed a single shot.
This is the story of a man who made every bullet count. A soldier whose enemies feared him, and whose country almost forgot him.
From Paddocks to the Peninsula
A while ago, I watched an Australian film called William Kelly’s War. It was loosely based on the life of Billy Sing.
full movie here
The father, much like Billy Sing’s, rationed bullets when the two brothers hunted roos. Just one. Make it count. That detail stuck with me... because it speaks to the type of men who went off to war: practical, tough, and frighteningly accurate.
It led me to learn about the real man. Not the fictional character. And that was when I learned about Billy.
Billy was born in 1886 to a Chinese father and English mother. In 1914, as war broke out, he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force. At just 5 foot 5, he wasn’t physically imposing - but with a Lee-Enfield rifle and a telescopic sight, Billy Sing became death in the gullies.
By the end of Gallipoli, Billy had racked up over 150 confirmed kills, though some estimates place the number closer to 300. He hunted snipers, silenced machine gun crews, and slipped through the scrub like a ghost.
Ion “Jack” Idriess, who would become a famous author, served as Billy’s spotter. He described Sing as “a little chap, very dark, with a jet black moustache and goatee beard. A picturesque-looking mankiller.”
The life of Ion Idriess is another article in its own right so we will leave that for now. Suffice to say, he was a profoundly amazing ANZAC and I will not belittle him by merely addressing him in one paragraph here. We will be chatting about him in days to come... but back to Billy.
Billy vs. Abdul the Terrible
Sing became such a problem for the Ottoman forces that they dispatched their best sniper, nicknamed “Abdul the Terrible,” to take him out. The two spent days tracking each other through scrub and silence.
When Abdul finally found him, Billy saw him too. Two sharpshooters locked eyes across the battlefield. Two minds, one shot. Billy fired first.
He survived the encounter - but only just. Moments later, Turkish artillery lit up his position, and Billy and his spotter barely escaped with their lives.
Wounds Without Glory
Billy was hit several times during the war...once in the shoulder at Gallipoli, and later by shrapnel and gas on the Western Front. He was decorated with the Distinguished Conduct Medal, praised by commanders, and even awarded the Belgian Croix de Guerre.
He married a Scottish girl named Elizabeth while recovering from injuries in Britain. But like so many soldiers, the war never really let go.
After returning to Australia, Billy drifted. He tried gold mining. He ended up in a boarding house in Brisbane. He died alone in 1943, in a rented room with five shillings in his pocket.
Legacy Remembered
For years, Billy Sing was a ghost in the history books, his medals gathering dust. But he never disappeared completely. His name lived on in the whispers of veterans, in war diaries, in the memories of spotters and stretcher-bearers who knew the man who never missed.
Today, there’s a monument in Brisbane’s Lutwyche Cemetery, near his unassuming gravestone. And every year, riflemen gather on the Sunshine Coast for the Billy Sing Memorial Shooting Competition, firing Lee-Enfields over long distances, in quiet tribute to the little man from Clermont who brought fear to the enemy and pride to the ANZACs.
A Final Shot
Billy’s battlefield was primitive and raw. No drones overhead feeding him movement patterns, no infrared imaging or satellite maps. Just a battered rifle, a basic scope, a spotter by his side - and long, silent hours under a baking sun or freezing winds, waiting for the right breath, the right blink, the right movement of an enemy's head.
Modern snipers carry the weight of war with them - but they are rarely alone. Satellites watch the terrain. Radios keep them in touch. Technology fills the gaps. Their courage is unquestioned, but their world is mapped in detail.
Billy Sing fought in a different kind of war. He had no GPS. No digital scope. No thermal vision. He had his eyes. His nerves. And a rifle he’d learned to shoot with one bullet at a time, hunting kangaroos in the paddocks of Queensland.
His war was up close. Personal. Every enemy face seen clearly, through a fog of heat and dust. Every breath controlled. Every trigger pull a choice with no second shot. He lay in the dirt for hours, motionless. Waiting. Watching. Wondering if he was being watched back.
Sometimes, he was.
Billy Sing used his silence and aim to protect lives. Today, we face different kinds of snipers—those who don't use rifles, but ideas, policies, and stealthy shifts in values to undermine the foundations of the nation. No trenches, but cultural, moral, and historical fault lines.
Perhaps the modern battlefield isn’t marked by barbed wire and bayonets, but by eroded traditions, divided communities, and forgotten stories. The danger isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s calculated, quiet, and closer than we think.
