Roland Perry - Anzac Sniper: The extraordinary story of Stan Savige, one of Australia’s greatest soldiers

Author ROLAND PERRY OAM is one of Australias most prolific and versatile writers.

Professor Perrys non-fiction works include The Queen, Her Lover and the Most Notorious Spy in History as well as comprehensive works on the two major war fronts of the Great War: Monash: The Outsider Who Won a War, The Australian Light Horse and Monash and Chauvel. He further covered Australias involvement in the Pacific War of 19411945 with The Fight for Australia.

He is the only author to publish two biographies on the infamous Cambridge University Ring of Spies, who were controlled by Russian Intelligence: The Fifth Man and The Last of the Cold War Spies.

Professor Perrys other non-fiction international bestsellers include The Don, the definitive biography of Sir Donald Bradman, Millers Luck, and Hidden Power, about the election and presidency of Ronald Reagan. A brief foray into books on animals saw him publish the classic Bill the Bastard and Horrie: The War Dog.

Anzac Sniper is his thirty-third book and seventeenth biography.

To the memory of the late Major Warren Perry,

MBE, ED, BEc (Sydney), MA (Melbourne), Litt D (Melbourne),

with gratitude for his guidance and generosity

Contents

Western Front, 19161917

The Mediterranean and Middle East, Saviges locations during WWI and WWII

New Guinea and Bougainville, 19421945

1915

S tan Savige and his spotter, Private Mick Sunderland, eased their way up towards Snipers Ridge, above Lone Pine, in the hour before dawn. It was 20 September 1915, at Anzac Cove, Gallipoli. The night before, Savige had been promoted to company sergeant major. It was a subtle bribe that many men accepted in war, designed to induce a soldier to take on a task he might otherwise have thought twice about.

Savige, 25 years of age, was keen to rise through the ranks. He had been rejected for officer training in Australia, primarily on the basis of his lack of formal education. No matter that he was more intelligent than most. It was irrelevant that he was close to the best, if not the best, marksman ever tested before the Great War. It meant little now as he and Private Sunderland crept towards the rocky outcrop.

Savige had left school at 12. He would have to lift his rating the hard way: by proving he was commander and officer material in the field of battle. That was why he had not hesitated to take charge of the snipers post he was about to fill. In this new and dangerous mission, he would be asked to map the no-mans-land between the opposing Australian and Turkish troops on this narrow finger of Turkish land.

Primarily, though, his mission was to eliminate Turkish snipers. They had been firing down from their elevated perches above Anzac Cove and slaughtering an unacceptable number of Anzacs since the Allies failed effort to break out of the cove six weeks earlier.

Savige had been on Gallipoli with 24th Battalion for just two weeks, in the trenches firing at Turks less than 20 metres away. But Snipers Ridge was a different proposition. Killing took on another dimension. In the flurry of trench warfare, a soldier would rarely be certain he had hit an enemy. On this ridge of death, however, Saviges job was to make sure he struck as many of the opposition as possible.

His commanding officer told him it would be for just a few days, until he became fatigued or needed a break. It was an exhausting business, this killing. Making a hit required patience and concentration well beyond the norm. There would be no chitchat. Savige was a gregarious type, who loved a yarn and a laugh. He was one of the most popular soldiers on Gallipoli, a most unlikely assassin. Most of them were dour, laconic types, who took life with the ease and unconcern of farmers shooting vermin. A happy-go-lucky character was not usually the right type. On this ridge where he and Sunderland crawled in behind rocks, Savige would be a monk in retreat.

There was some moonlight, but what they first saw through their periscopes was a dark blur. Over the next hour it would take on the shapes of all the named positions Savige would be able to see from his spot in the far south of the cove. There was Baby 700 hill in the distance. Northeast of it were Chunuk Bair and Hill 971, also Turkish-held.

Savige was an experienced bushman, confident of hitting human targets up to 1000 yards away with his Enfield, depending on the opportunity that is, the target presented. He had enhanced aperture sights for the rifle, which he reckoned gave him extra range. His precision would depend on the conditions: the ideal conditions were flat terrain and a stationary target. If he could strike up to 200 yards just once on Gallipoli, he would justify the faith his commander had in him.

The half-light of pre-dawn was enough for Savige to be able to take an aperture sight from his back kit. He rested the rifle on his thigh, unscrewed the conventional long-range volley peep sight, then replaced it with his own aperture sight. Lean, 26-year-old Sunderland, from the inner Melbourne suburb of Collingwood, gave him a thumbs-up and a smile. The replacement was illegal, but expert marksmen like Savige did not gain their reputation by using ordinary equipment.

Savige did not just look after his Enfield, he nursed it. He would use any method to give himself an advantage from painstaking cleaning of every part, to any additional gadgetry he could find, right down to a tiny rubber cap for his trigger finger, which he swore prevented slippage.

Savige had made sure the rifles calibration was up to his fastidious standards before he made the climb to the ridge. Now, in the chill of pre-dawn Gallipoli, he cleaned the barrel with oil, then a resin that removed residual propellant. He worked with a loving tempo as he oiled a cord that was then pulled through the barrel. A further inside wipe with a clean cloth was then needed to avoid a burst of blue smoke after the gun was fired, which would give away his presence on the ridge.

Sunderland, without being asked, obliged by cleaning bullets. He placed 40 bullets on a cloth between them, ready to be loaded into Saviges 10-round magazine. Sunderland was a better-than-average rifleman, but on this day, and while they were on the ridge, he would defer to the companys new sergeant major, with whom he had practised often.

To Sunderland and anyone else who had witnessed Saviges skills, there was no one in his class. The unspoken question was: would he perform on this precarious perch, while being fired at, and when one false move could see either of them dead? Would he follow up his unparalleled performances in hitting targets now that he was in torrid combat, ordered to carry out this cold-blooded, methodical murder of human beings?

Sunderland and others wondered about Saviges character. He was such a nice, friendly, selfless fellow, who would go out of his way for you every time. Hed been a Sunday school teacher and Scout master. Could he carry out his brutal mission, or would he crack under pressure?