The Sheikh and the Dustbin and Other McAuslan Stories

Plot

"Private McAuslan, J., the Dirtiest Soldier in the World (alias the Tartan Caliban, or the Highland Division's answer to Pekin Man) first demonstrated his unfitness for the service in that affectionate memoir of life in a Scottish regiment, The General Danced at Dawn. He continued his disorderly advance, losing, soiling, or destroying his equipment, through the pages of McAuslan in the Rough, and if civilian readers regarded him with shocked disbelief, a generation of ex-Servicemen hailed him with delight as an old familiar friend--unkempt, ungainly, and unwashed, but not altogether unloved (even by his platoon commander who described him with feelings as "the biggest walking disaster to hit the British Army since Ancient Pistol"). The Sheikh and the Dustbin continues the career of the great incompetent as he bauchles (see Glossary) across North Africa and Scotland, swinging his right arm in time with his right leg and tripping over his untied laces. His admirers already know him as court-martial defendant, ghost-catcher, star-crossed lover and golf caddie extraordinary; here he appears as the unlikeliest of batmen to his long-suffering protector and persecutor, Lieutenant Dand MacNeill, as guardroom philospher and adviser to the leader of the Riff Rebellion, as trenchant commentator on Scotland's World Cup performance, and even as Lance-Corporal McAuslan, the Mad Tyrant of Three Section. Whether map-reading his erratic way through the Sahara by night, confronting mobs of Arab rioters ("Mither o' Goad! Wull ye look at yon!"), or falling hapless victim to the plots of poachers and illicit distillers in the wilds of darkest Perthshire, McAuslan's talent for comic catastrophe is as sure as ever, waking happy memories of an Army life and characters that are fast fading away."--Book jacket flap