Billy Sing
William Edward 'Billy' Sing, DCM (2 March 1886 – 19 May 1943) was a Chinese Australian soldier who served in the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) during World War I, best known as a sniper during the Gallipoli Campaign. He took at least 150 confirmed kills during that campaign, and may have had over 200 kills in total. One contemporary estimate put his tally at close to 300 kills. Towards the end of the war, Sing married a Scottish woman, but the relationship did not last long. Following work in sheep farming and gold mining, he died in relative poverty and obscurity in Brisbane during World War II.
A biography by John Hamilton, Gallipoli Sniper: The life of Billy Sing, was published in 2008. A television mini-series based on this book, The Legend of Billy Sing, is in post-production as of 2010. The production has attracted controversy due to the director's decision to cast actors of white ancestry in the roles of Sing and his father, since Sing's father was Chinese.
Read more about Billy Sing: Early Life, Return To Civilian Life, Later Life, Legacy
Famous quotes containing the word sing:
“We sing the funeral, as goes the custom, with the hymn of the Dead. But Manuel, he chose a hymn for the living: the song of the coumbite, the song of the earth, of the water, the plants, of fellowship between peasants because he wanted, as I now understand it, that his death for you be the renewal of life.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)