Private McAuslan Books in Order

The Private McAuslan stories follow Lieutenant Dand MacNeill, a young officer in a Highland battalion just after the Second World War, as he tries to keep order, morale and his own dignity intact. They are closely based on Fraser's time with the Gordon Highlanders, but told with a relaxed fictional polish.

At the shambolic centre of it all stands Private McAuslan, the dirtiest, most hopeless soldier in the regiment and somehow one of its quiet heroes.

In The General Danced at Dawn the battalion is scattered across North Africa, adjusting uneasily from wartime intensity to peacetime routines. MacNeill deals with eccentric commanding officers, pipe bands that double as social minefields and the strange atmosphere of remote desert postings. McAuslan turns up wherever things can be muddled, from ceremonial guard duties to football tours.

McAuslan in the Rough and The Sheikh and the Dustbin carry the unit through more episodes in North Africa and then back home to Scotland. The stories take in everything from regimental quizzes and smallpox scares to chaotic golf matches, mess nights and the bureaucracy of demobilisation. Around the jokes runs a steady sense of how a close knit company thinks, gossips and quietly looks after its own.

MacNeill narrates in the first person, half exasperated and half affectionate, and Fraser lets the humour sit alongside moments of real melancholy. Veterans drift away, new conscripts arrive and the army itself is shrinking and changing, yet the battalion still clings to its rituals and stories. McAuslan, usually the butt of the joke, is also the yardstick of humanity when regulations and appearances go too far.

The three collections can be read in order or dipped into at will, since each chapter stands as a self contained anecdote. Together they give a warm portrait of postwar British army life, full of small triumphs and pratfalls rather than big set piece battles, and they have become favourites for readers who enjoy Fraser's soldierly eye without Flashman's scandals.