Private McAuslan J the dirtiest soldier in the World (alias the Tartan Caliban or the Highland Division answer to Pekin Man) first demonstrated his unfitness for the service in the The General Danced at Dawn. He continued his disorderly advance losing soiling or destroying his equipment through the pages of McAuslan in the Rough. The Sheikh and the Dustbin pursues the career of the great incompetent as he bauchles 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 her he appears as the unlikeliest of of batman to his longsuffering protector and persecutor Lieutenant Dand MacNeil and guardroom philosopher and adviser to the leader of the Riff Rebellion and even as Lance Corporal McAuslan the Mad Tyrant of Three Section. Whether map reading his erratic way through the Sahara by night or confronting Arab rioters McAuslans talent for catastrophe is a sure as ever.