AustLit logo

AustLit

image of person or book cover 2631754262401728339.jpg
This image has been sourced from online.
y separately published work icon Absent without Leave single work   biography  
Alternative title: Leave : The Private War of Private Stanley Livingston
Issue Details: First known date: 2013... 2013 Absent without Leave
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Absent Without Leave follows three wide-eyed twenty-one-year olds from their enlistment at the Sydney showground in 1940 to disembarking in the Middle East before being plunged into jungle warfare in the Asia Pacific. Private Stanley Livingston and his two best mates, Roy Lonsdale and Gordon Oxman, would by the end of the war be brothers-in-law as well as brothers in arms as Stanley would marry Roy's sister Evelyn, while Gordon would marry Lily Livingston, Stanley's younger sister.

'Over the course of the war, these three young men would be court-martialled four times for abandoning their training units. They were not cowards, running from responsibility, rather they were deeply committed family men who ran to the service of their families. This was a more common occurrence than has ever really been reported before. Stanley's mother died just prior to the outbreak of WW2, and while in the midst of battle in the Middle East, Stanley received word of the sudden death of his father. Once back in Sydney, Pte Stanley Livingston skipped training camp to be with his younger sister Lily, who was deeply traumatised by the loss and had suffered a mental breakdown.

'After almost six months AWL, Stanley surrendered just in time to embark with his battalion to Milne Bay in New Guinea, where he was court-martialled in the field and pleaded guilty to all charges. He was fined twenty pounds before being plunged into the harrowing combat - with no jungle warfare training whatsoever. Illuminating, deeply moving and told with no shortage of humour, Absent Without Leave is part biography, part family memoir, and part of Australian history that is largely forgotten, because no one ever really talked about it. Until now.' (Publisher's blurb)

Notes

  • Absent Without Leave is part biography, part family memoir.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Sydney, New South Wales,: Allen and Unwin , 2013 .
      image of person or book cover 2631754262401728339.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 320p, [16] pages of platesp.
      Description: illustrations, portraits
      Note/s:
      • Published November 2013
      ISBN: 9781743315828 (pbk.) :

Other Formats

Works about this Work

Lured by Love Jacinda Tutty , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 9 November 2013; (p. 23)

— Review of Absent without Leave Paul Livingston , 2013 single work biography
For King and Country...and Family Tim Barlass , 2013 single work column
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 19 October 2013; (p. 35)
Lured by Love Jacinda Tutty , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 9 November 2013; (p. 23)

— Review of Absent without Leave Paul Livingston , 2013 single work biography
For King and Country...and Family Tim Barlass , 2013 single work column
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 19 October 2013; (p. 35)
Last amended 21 Feb 2020 11:44:34
X