Joe Dolce: ‘The Battles of Billy Sing’

The Battles of Billy Sing

Put away your newspaper,
and listen to these words,
I’ll tell a tale the likes of which,
I’m sure you’ve never heard.

William Edward “Billy” Sing,
Oz’s finest sniper,
called the Anzac Angel of Death,
and the Ypres Viper.

His father, born in Shanghai,
mother, an English nurse,
his Chinese-Aussie ancestry,
in youth, became a curse.

Anti-Chinese sentiment,
knocked back some volunteers,
but keen to serve his countrymen,
young Billy persevered.

Skill with the Enfield rifle,
earned him commendation
and in the Fifth Light Horse began
his lethal occupation.

The Turks feared his marksman’s eye,
his toll, unbearable,
they trained a sniper of their own:
Abdul the Terrible.

Positioned near Turkish lines,
cannon couldn’t reach him,
three hundred kills, Sing tallied, but
took wounds in back and limb.

Facing off across the trench,
beneath Chatham Post skies,
Bill Sing shot first and Abdul took
a round between the eyes.

He fought the fight in Ypres,
in woods, at Polygon,
hospitalized from gunshot wounds,
and trench gas in his lung.

A Scottish nurse married him,
they met while in her ward,
but she left him three years later,
their post-war life was hard.

Old Billy Sing died alone,
boarding up in Brisbane,
with just five shillings in his coat,
no one to recall him.

A century on from Ypres,
his name raised from limbo,
with federal funds apportioned for
tribute to this hero.

Fifty years, an unmarked grave,
a statue for his hours,
the plaque that reads: “Let us give thanks,
that he was one of ours.”

Joe Dolce