This Australian Farmer Dropped 150 Soldiers — And None of Them Had a Clue Who Was Firing
The Ghost of Gallipoli: How Billy Singh Changed the Art of War
April 1915, Gallipoli Peninsula. The Australian soldiers crouched in their trenches, waiting for death. It always came. Somewhere out there, hidden in the rocky hills, an Ottoman sniper watched. He had killed 12 men in three days. Nobody saw him, but he saw everyone. Private Tommy Wilson peeked over the trench wall for two seconds. He wanted to see if the water cart was coming. A single crack echoed across the valley. Tommy fell backward into the mud with a bullet hole between his eyes. He was the 147th Australian soldier to die this way since the landing.
This was the nightmare of Anzac Cove. The Australians and New Zealanders had come to take the beach from the Ottoman Empire. They thought it would take days. Now they were stuck. The Ottomans held the high ground. Every ridge, every rocky outcrop hid enemy shooters. The Allies couldn’t move forward or retreat. They could barely survive.
Men couldn’t eat in peace. They couldn’t sleep without fear. They couldn’t even use the bathroom safely. One soldier tried to relieve himself behind a rock—a bullet found him. Another reached to light a cigarette. He never got to smoke it. The invisible enemy was always watching. In one week, 203 men fell to sniper fire. Their bodies lay where they dropped, retrieving them meant certain death.
The British commanders tried everything. They fired artillery at the hills for hours. The explosions shook the ground and sent clouds of dust into the sky. When the smoke cleared, the snipers were still there. They had moved. The shells killed rocks and dirt, nothing more. Next, spotters searched every inch of the hillside for movement, glints of metal, disturbed earth. They found nothing. Two spotters were killed while searching. Binoculars couldn’t save them.
Suppressive fire was ordered. Hundreds of rifles fired at rocks, bushes, shadows. Thousands of bullets. Deafening noise. When it stopped, the Ottoman snipers fired back. Three more Australians died. The enemy hadn’t been touched.
In the officer’s tent, Major General William Bridges slammed his fist on the table. Nearly 600 men lost to snipers in a month. Conventional tactics were failing. Marksmen couldn’t compete. Artillery was useless. Colonel James, shaking his head, said, “Sniping is not proper warfare. Gentlemen do not hide like cowards and shoot from shadows. It is murder, not combat.” Others agreed. This was the old way—war was supposed to be honorable. Soldiers charged openly with bayonets. Hiding in rocks and shooting men who couldn’t shoot back wasn’t the British way.
But the men dying in the trenches didn’t care about honor. They cared about staying alive.
Among them sat a quiet 23-year-old private named Billy Singh. He didn’t look like a soldier who would change everything. Short, lean, dark hair and sharp eyes. His mother was Chinese, his father English. He grew up on a farm in Queensland, Australia, thousands of miles from Gallipoli. Before the war, nobody in the army would have looked at him twice.
Billy spent his life hunting kangaroos in the outback. He knew how to stay perfectly still for 15 hours under the burning sun. He read the land, used every rock and bush for cover. The best hunter was the one you never saw coming. He could track a kangaroo across five miles of rough terrain, predict its moves, hit a target at 400 yards with iron sights.
The army gave Billy a standard Lee Enfield rifle. Nothing special, just a basic .303 caliber weapon. He watched other soldiers fire blindly at the hills, watched artillery explode and accomplish nothing, watched good men die because nobody could find the enemy. He thought about kangaroos—fire randomly into the bush, you hit nothing. Animals hear you coming and vanish. The only way to hunt was patience. Become part of the landscape, wait for the target to come to you, know the land better than your prey.
Billy looked at the rocky hills where the snipers hid. The terrain reminded him of home. He realized something the British colonels hadn’t. This was not a job for artillery or bayonet charges or gentlemanly combat. This was a job for a hunter.
He did not ask permission. On May 3rd, Billy took his rifle and inspected every part. He chose the one with the smoothest trigger pull and cleanest barrel. He tested the sights three times. Then he gathered rocks. For two days, Billy built his hunting position—a spot 350 yards from the Ottoman trenches. Not too close, not too far. He stacked flat stones in a low wall that looked like natural rubble, wove scrub brush between the rocks, created a tiny opening for his rifle barrel. From the outside, it looked like another pile of rocks. Inside, Billy could lie flat for hours.
He practiced his breathing, learned the rhythm of the enemy trenches. Ottoman soldiers appeared at the same times each day. Morning water delivery at six, shift change at noon, evening meal at seven. They followed patterns. Billy studied those patterns like kangaroo trails.
On May 5th, Billy took his first shot. An Ottoman soldier stood up to pass a water bucket. Distance: 362 yards. Billy had calculated the wind and uphill angle. He squeezed the trigger slowly. The rifle cracked. The Ottoman fell. Billy did not celebrate. He stayed perfectly still for three more hours. The enemy fired randomly at the hillside. Their bullets hit rocks 50 yards away. Billy waited until they stopped searching, then crawled out in darkness.
The next morning, he was back before sunrise. He shot two more Ottomans that day—340 yards, 395 yards. Both died instantly. The enemy couldn’t find the shooter. On the third day, Billy killed three more men. The Ottomans stopped standing up, stopped passing supplies openly, started moving only at night.
After 12 days, Billy had 12 confirmed kills. The British officers noticed something: their casualty rate had dropped. Men weren’t dying from sniper fire in Billy’s sector. Other sections still lost 15 to 20 men in the same period. Bridges heard about the quiet private getting results. He called Billy to his tent and asked how he did it. “Find good ground. Stay invisible. Be patient. Shoot straight,” Billy explained.
This was not the gentleman’s warfare Colonel James talked about, but it worked. Many officers resisted. “This is not how the British army fights,” James insisted. “We are not assassins.” But Bridges looked at the numbers—Billy’s sector had 60% fewer deaths. That meant 60 soldiers who went home instead of dying.
Bridges assigned a spotter, Tom Shehan, to work with Billy. Tom’s job: watch through a salvaged periscope, spot targets, calculate distances, help Billy adjust. Together, they became a two-man hunting team. The Sing-Shehan system was devastating. Tom would spot, whisper distance and position. Billy would adjust, breathe, squeeze, fire. Both would stay frozen for hours. They never fired twice from the same position. Within a month, Billy and Tom had 40 confirmed kills. Not once did the Ottomans locate Billy’s position.
In Billy’s protected sector, casualties dropped from 20 per week to just eight. Other sections still lost soldiers daily, but where Billy hunted, Australians could eat, sleep, move without constant fear. Billy achieved all this with a standard rifle, homemade camouflage, a salvaged periscope, and the skills he learned hunting kangaroos.
By the end of June, Billy was killing 8–10 Ottomans every day, and the enemy still had no idea who was firing. By July, Allied deaths from sniper fire in Billy’s sector dropped by 75%. Soldiers requested transfers to his sector. They felt safer. Word spread: a silent protector watched over certain areas—a ghost who hunted the hunters.
Bridges ordered Billy to train others. Fifteen men were selected. Billy taught them everything—how to build natural hides, judge distance, control breathing, wait motionless for hours, study enemy patterns. By mid-August, Billy’s students were positioned across the ANZAC line. The sniper casualty rate dropped across the beachhead.
The Ottomans noticed. Their own snipers were the best in the region, but Allied shooters were killing them from positions nobody could locate. They brought in their legend: Abdul Aziz, “Abdul the Terrible,” the most feared sniper in the Ottoman army. He had over 90 confirmed kills. His mission: find the ghost, kill the invisible Australian.
Abdul set up his own hide 420 yards away. For three days, he watched. He saw nothing. On the fourth day, Billy killed a soldier at 370 yards. Abdul saw the muzzle flash—a tiny puff of smoke. He marked the location. The next morning, Abdul aimed at the spot, waited for Billy to fire again. Hours passed. Then Billy fired. Abdul saw the flash, squeezed his trigger. His bullet struck a rock where Billy’s barrel had been—but Billy had already moved.
Billy knew someone was hunting him now. The duel lasted 11 days. Abdul fired 17 shots at Billy’s positions. Every one missed. Billy fired only when certain, changed positions after every shot, never established a pattern. On the eighth day, Billy saw a flicker of movement 430 yards away—Abdul adjusting his position. Billy aimed, held his breath, squeezed the trigger. The bullet struck Abdul in the forehead. The legendary Ottoman sniper was dead. The Ottomans had sent their best hunter. Now he was gone, and Billy was still invisible.
By late September, the Ottomans pulled their trenches back by 200 yards in Billy’s sector. They retreated from ground they held, giving up territory to escape the invisible shooter. The Allies gained ground without firing a shell or losing a man.
Billy Singh had 150 confirmed kills by October 1915. His spotter estimated the real number was closer to 200. 150 families would receive news that their son or father had fallen to the assassin. The farm boy who pulled the trigger remained invisible, a ghost haunting Gallipoli.
The campaign ended in December. The Allies evacuated. Billy left with them, but his war was not finished. He was transferred to France, where he continued hunting, training soldiers, saving lives. He received the Distinguished Conduct Medal for bravery. When asked how he felt, Billy shrugged. “Just doing my job.”
In 1918, Billy was wounded by artillery. Shrapnel tore through his shoulder and chest. He could no longer hold a rifle for precision shooting. His war was over.
Back in Queensland, Billy tried to rebuild his life. He worked hard jobs, rarely talked about the war. The farmer who had become the most feared sniper in the British Empire wanted only to disappear into normal life. The years passed. Billy married, but the war made peace difficult. He had nightmares, woke reaching for a rifle that wasn’t there, couldn’t stay in crowds.
While Billy struggled in obscurity, his techniques transformed military practice. Armies studied his methods, taught patience and concealment, building natural hides, reading enemy patterns. The ghost of Gallipoli changed warfare forever, though most never heard his name.
On May 19, 1943, Billy Singh died in a home for elderly soldiers in Brisbane, age 57. His death received only a small notice in the local paper. No crowds attended his funeral. No military honors. The man who killed 150 enemy soldiers and revolutionized modern warfare was buried in a simple grave. Most of Australia never knew what they had lost.
But Billy’s legacy lived on. The Australian military teaches his methods to every new generation of snipers. Modern instructors refer to the “Sing principles”: stay invisible, learn the ground, study your target, wait for the perfect shot. These ideas from a Queensland farm boy are now fundamental to military doctrine worldwide.
Billy Singh’s story teaches us that the greatest solutions often come from unexpected places. The British colonels thought they knew how to fight. None of it worked. Then a quiet farmer showed them a better way. He did not need expensive equipment or complicated strategies—just the skills he already had and the wisdom to apply them differently.
True heroism does not always seek attention. Billy Singh killed 150 enemy soldiers, protected thousands of Allied troops, changed how armies fight. He did it all while remaining almost completely invisible—during the war and after. The most deadly warriors are not always the loudest. Sometimes they are the quiet ones, the patient ones, the invisible ones—the farmer who became a ghost and saved lives by taking them. The hunter who changed warfare forever, then disappeared back into ordinary life, content to let his work speak louder than his name ever could.
