From the earliest days of the Gallipoli campaign, the Turkish snipers posed a deadly threat to the Allied forces. Among the Ottoman troops were many skilled marksmen, a number of them men who had grown up in the rural countryside, including the Gallipoli region itself. For everyone who served there, it quickly became clear that the danger was not confined to the front line. Snipers could fire on men at the beach, in the valleys, and in the many places where soldiers were forced to move across open ground.
Men were being shot by an enemy they could not see while going about their daily routines. The writer Ion Idriess recalled watching a young man walking through a gully carrying water, whistling as he went. Suddenly the water bottles flew from his hand and he dropped to the ground, the victim of a sniper’s bullet. Military rank offered no protection.
In fact, anyone recognizable as an officer was an attractive target, and a number of senior officers were killed by sniper fire. Colonel Henry MacLaurin was a young officer commanding the 1st Infantry Brigade. A lawyer in civilian life, he had been educated at Sydney Grammar School and the University of Sydney. MacLaurin was killed by a sniper on 27 April on the hill that would later bear his name.
General Bridges, commander of the 1st Australian Division, inspected the front line at Gallipoli every day and became a familiar figure among the men. On 15 May, as he made his way through Monash Valley, he was warned about an extremely dangerous corner that had already cost the lives of five men that day alone. Bridges dashed from a protected part of the track to another, but the sniper found his mark. The general was badly wounded.
He received treatment and was evacuated from the peninsula, but he died aboard the hospital ship Gascon from blood loss and gangrene. The New Zealand officer Major William Malone managed to bring the sniper situation in Monash Valley under control. Malone looked for men who had been champion marksmen before the war. He selected Lieutenant Thomas Hamu Grace, a Maori officer, to lead a team of snipers.
Their success proved the value of these efforts at once. The men worked in pairs, one observer and one sniper. The task demanded excellent eyesight and intense concentration. At the very least, the snipers did everything in their power to keep the exposed tracks and the men moving between them safe during the day.
The rhythm of life on the peninsula was different for the snipers. While other soldiers not in the front-line trenches were assigned hard labor, such as carrying water or supplies from the beach to the hilltops, or were placed on guard duty, the snipers and their observers sat motionless for long hours in their chosen positions, watching and waiting for a target to appear. Gallipoli was a noisy place. The sounds of artillery, rifles, and machine guns echoed constantly, reconnaissance aircraft occasionally flew overhead, and thousands of men moved through the valleys and across the hilltops.
Amid all that noise, the snipers had to maintain their focus to find targets in the Turkish trenches. The most famous Australian sniper was Private Billy Sing. Born in Clermont, Queensland, Sing was one of about two hundred Australians of Chinese descent who served in the Australian Imperial Force. Joining the AIF was not easy for those who were not of European background.
The Defence Act of 1909 exempted persons who were not substantially of European origin from military service. The rule was not always applied at enlistment, so some men, such as Billy Sing, were able to volunteer. Among the troops, Billy Sing was known by the nickname “The Murderer,” and his skill with a rifle drew praise from senior commanders and the press alike. General Sir William Birdwood, the commander-in-chief of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, commended his vigilance, good judgment, and accuracy, expressing the hope that other snipers would follow the example of Private Sing.
Estimates of the number of men he killed range from two to three hundred. Billy Sing survived the Gallipoli campaign, having been awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal, and went on to serve on the Western Front with the 31st Battalion. In 1917, at Polygon Wood, he was recognized for leading a patrol under intense bombardment to locate and eliminate enemy snipers. He was recommended for the Military Medal, with his merit report noting that his ability was phenomenal.
Eventually he was mentioned in dispatches and received the Belgian Croix de Guerre. In August 1918, Billy returned to Australia aboard the HMT Bonah, and even on the voyage home his keen eye and powers of concentration were put to good use, as he was tasked with keeping watch for enemy submarines. Having served throughout the entire war and been wounded in action three times, suffering shrapnel injuries to his legs and back, Billy was discharged at the end of the war in November 1918.