The General Danced at Dawn
George MacDonald Fraser
 Monsoon selection board follows Corporal MacNeill is his efforts to become an officer, and his examination by an officer selection board in India in the final stages of World War II. Despite performing badly in every task, often trying to answer cleverly and failing miserably, he is approved and commissioned due to his apparent dogged determination to complete the assault course. He perseveres in his futile attempts to cross a mud filled ditch, although the examining officers advise him to 'call it a day' and climb out. In reality he was unwilling to finish or turn back, as he had lost his trousers while floundering in the mud, and had resolved to stay in the water to avoid embarrassment. Silence in the Ranks finds subaltern MacNeill joining an unidentified Highland regiment as a platoon commander, and finding it difficult to fit into the regiment's family atmosphere, or to identify with the men under him. At the end of the chapter he is assigned as Duty Officer (CQ) and must remain in barracks on Hogmanay, while the other officers celebrate elsewhere, and is joined in his quarters by some soldiers of his platoon for drinks and conversation. At the close of the evening, he learns that 'Darkie', whom he hears his men talking about, is in fact his own nickname. Play Up, Play Up and Get Tore In follows Dand as he takes the battalion football team on tour on a British-controlled island in the Mediterranean (presumably Malta). Despite the machinations of an opportunistic naval officer, Lieutenant Samuels, who attempts to pass the Highlanders off as members of his own crew, the tour is a success, and the team win every match they play, even against 'The Fleet' in a match organised by the over-enthusiastic Governor, who fails to recognise the disparity in resources between a small regiment and an entire armed service. Lt. Samuels almost gambles away the teams' paychest on this match, but the money is saved by the unwitting Private McAuslan. Wee Wullie is about a soldier known only as 'Wee Wullie', who is frequently drunk and violent, and often ends up being arrested by the military police. The colonel is strangely tolerant of Wullie, however, and it emerges that during the war he showed great heroism, carrying a wounded German for days across the desert until they were both rescued. He received no accolades for this act of heroism, as while in hospital recuperating he got drunk and climbed onto the hospital roof, where he was yet again arrested by the military police. The General Danced at Dawn. The regiment's colonel is soon to retire, and the regiment is eager to put on a good show in an upcoming inspection before he does. The inspection is going badly, 'anything that could go wrong, seemed to go wrong' until the inspecting General watches a display of the regiment's officers performing Highland dancing. He joins in, becoming more and more enthusiastic and recruiting more and more passers by to join in, until by dawn the next morning, the entire regiment and most of the local populace are dancing 'a one hundred and twenty-eightsome reel'. The General's inspection report 'congratulated the battalion, and highly commended the pipe-sergeant on the standard of the officers' dancing.' Night Run to Palestine. MacNeill, on detached service in Egypt, misses his flight to return to the Battalion. While he waits for the next flight, he is put in command of an overnight troop train to Jerusalem. As well as keeping watch for Zionist saboteurs and snipers, he has to deal with an interfering Lt. Colonel, a group of innocent young ATS, a padre deeply concerned for their moral safety,and a soldier who locks himself in the lavatory, amongst other things. He gets the train to Jerusalem in one piece, despite the effort of the Lt. Colonel, before returning to Egypt and a farcical court of inquiry which determines at great length that he missed his original flight out of Egypt, hence his presence in Egypt, and that he must therefore get the next flight.