Sing was born on March 2, 1886, in Clermont, Queensland. He did not have a European appearance, even though the 1909 Defence Act required men joining the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) to look white. Sing was Eurasian; his father, John, was a drover from Shanghai who travelled to Australia in search of gold, while his mother, Mary Ann Pugh, was an Englishwoman from the county of Staffordshire.
Sing was described by his spotter, Ion Idriess, who went on to become a prolific Australian author, as “a little chap, very dark, with a jet-black moustache and a goatee beard. A picturesque-looking mankiller. He is the crack sniper of the Anzacs”.
Several hundred more men of colour put up their hands to fight in the AIF, even though the first of the restrictive laws later known collectively as the White Australia policy had been enacted 13 years earlier.
Davis’ miniseries was criticised by the Chinese-Australian community in post-production but he defended his choices, adamant he did not have the resources to find Chinese actors.
In the end, the miniseries never saw the light of day. But in 2014, two years after Davis told Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service: “I don’t deserve to make a film about Billy Sing because I don’t understand the Chinese-Australian experience,” he finished another World War I production, the full-length film William Kelly’s War.
A story of brothers who enlisted, William Kelly’s War again featured a sharpshooter nicknamed Billy. Again he was from Queensland. And again, he was white. Davis’ son reprised his role as the sniper, with Bonner again playing Billy’s father.
When Sing enlisted in the AIF on October 24, 1914, at the age of 28, he was 165cm (5 feet 5 inches) tall and weighed 64kg (141lb). He was three centimetres short of the 168cm enlistment requirement – and quite possibly narrower than the 86cm chest requirement.
“However, Sing had been known for his shooting and stockman skill,” says Australian historian and World War I battlefield tour guide Will Davies.
Sing enlisted in a recruitment centre at the Proserpine Rifle Club in Queensland, where he had been a champion shooter. Despite the heavy presence of the Anti-Chinese League in the state and the taunts he weathered growing up, Sing was one of the first in his district to enlist. He was posted to the 5th Light Horse Regiment and sent to war in December 1914.
“You’ve got a colour bar and that’s particularly enforced by the Light Horse because they were like the cavalry, an elitist group of men who could ride horses and could shoot,” Davies says. “They would have known who he was, but they also knew he was a good shot, probably a good man to have in the Light Horse. People like Billy Sing possibly slipped under the wire.”
Despite the abuse Chinese-Australians endured during recruitment, there was no discrimination within the ranks. After training in Egypt, Sing arrived in Gallipoli in Turkey on May 18, 1915.
One of Sing’s few direct quotes exists in a dispatch written by commanding officer Brigadier-General Granville “Bull” Ryrie to his wife.
“There is a champion sniper in the 5th Regiment called Sing. He is a half-bred Chinaman and has shot 119 Turks since we have been here. He spends all day and every day in a sniping position with a telescope and rifle, and if they show their heads at all, he has them. He says – ‘the silly fellows will put their heads up’.”
For his efforts from May to September 1915, Sing was mentioned in dispatches by British Officer General Sir Ian Hamilton and awarded the coveted Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) in 1916.
“For conspicuous gallantry from May to September 1915, at Anzac Cove, as a sniper,” the award stated. “His courage and skill were most marked and he was responsible for a very large number of casualties among the enemy, no risk being too great for him to take.”
Of more than 200 men of Chinese descent who fought with the AIF during World War I, 46 were killed in action or died of wounds or sickness, and about 20 were awarded medals. Sing was wounded in action several times after being transferred to the Western Front in France in January 1917.
Not long afterwards, he received the highest foreign commendation awarded to any Anzac of Chinese descent, the Croix de Guerre, awarded by the Belgian government for service with distinction. Sing was also entitled to wear an “A” over his battalion patch – which stood for Anzac – and the medal abbreviation DCM after his name.
But things were quite different when he returned home.
“Men like Billy Sing, for all their decorations and fame, found there was little for them in Australia on their return,” writes Davies in his new book, The Forgotten. “While briefly feted as an Anzac hero, he soon slipped into obscurity.”
Sing tried his hand on his settler’s farm and again in Australia’s goldfields, but never struck it rich. Some old-timers said he would shoot at the moon from his miner’s shack, writes John Hamilton in his account of Sing’s life, Gallipoli Sniper: The Life of Billy Sing.
Sing died in 1943 after moving to Brisbane to be closer to his sister. He was buried in a pauper’s grave at the city’s Lutwyche Cemetery, which remained unmarked for 50 years. It was not until 2015 that a memorial was erected in the cemetery and Sing’s legacy was honoured.
Stirrings of remembrance had begun in the 1990s. In 1993, 50 years after his death, a bronze plaque was placed on the building now occupying the site of the boarding house where he died. In 1995, a statue was unveiled in his hometown of Clermont. In 2004, an Australian sniper team in Baghdad named their mess hall Billy Sing’s Bar & Grill.
“Today little is known of the Chinese men who fought for their country, putting aside the abuse and racism they and their families had endured since their arrival in Australia,” Davies writes in his book. “They returned to an unsympathetic country.”
The Chinese-Australian women breaking down race barriers
The White Australia policy made war heroes like Sing social outcasts in their own country. The policy continues to echo through Australia, enabling situations like a director whiting out the ethnicity of his lead character.
Helene Martin Chung, a 75-year-old Chinese-Australian who was the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s first non-white television journalist, says Davis’ decision to cast an Anglo-Australian to play Sing now seems “quite extraordinary”.
“There are plenty of actors who could have played him, but I wonder whether the backers thought they would get more of an audience by downplaying or omitting an ethnic,” she says.
In 2015, Australia’s Nine Network ran a series called Gallipoli, written by journalist, author and screenwriter Christopher David Lee. James Stewart, an Australian of Chinese and Irish descent, played Sing, though the series revolved around other characters.
Briton Les O’Hara, 72, served in Vietnam as an army combat engineer just two years after he migrated to Australia in 1966.
“Out of all my Australian friends, I was the only one who was called up. I think the Australian government was getting their own back on the British after sacrificing all those Aussies at Gallipoli,” he says.
“We were a diverse lot in the army – different cultures, accents, religions and ethnic groups. But we were the Australian Army. When we came home, we were all rejected and shunned equally, despite our differences. Today there is more understanding and acceptance.”
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: How the tale of an Anzac hero was lost in time
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