The Complete McAuslan

From humorist George MacDonald Fraser comes the funniest stories of an inept soldier, Private McAuslan, now collected in a single volume.

The most disastrous soldier to ever serve in the British Army, Private McAuslan, J., the dirtiest soldier in the world (alias the tartan Caliban, or the Highland Division’s answer to the Peking man), first demonstrated his unfitness for service in “The General Danced at Dawn.” He continued his disorderly advance, losing, soiling, and destroying his equipment, through the pages of “McAuslan in the Rough.” The final story, “The Sheikh and the Dustbin,” pursues the career of the great incompetent as he shambles across North Africa and Scotland, swinging his right arm in time with his right leg and tripping over his untied laces. Whatever he does and wherever he goes, Private McAuslan’s admirers know him as court-martial defendant, ghost catcher, star-crossed lover, and golf-caddie extraordinaire.