The General Danced at Dawn is a collection of short stories by George MacDonald Fraser, narrated by Lieutenant Dand MacNeill, a young officer in a fictional Scottish battalion of the British Army, part of the 51st (Highland) Infantry Division.

In the epilogue to The Sheikh and the Dustbin, Fraser identified the unnamed battalion and its colonel, and revealed that the characters and events in the stories were based on real soldiers and incidents.

Despite performing every task badly, 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.

(In The Light's on at Signpost Fraser revealed that "Wullie" was based on a real soldier, whose act of heroism was not a solo march through the desert, but protecting the colonel by defying the Japanese in a POW camp.

The inspecting General MacCrimmon is unimpressed with the Battalion until he watches a display of the regiment's officers performing Highland dancing.

He joins in, becoming more and more enthusiastic and recruiting more and more soldiers and passers-by to join, until by dawn the next morning, a crowd of Highlanders, Fusiliers who share the base with the Highlanders, some military policemen, members of the local populace, an Italian cafe proprietor, a few Senussi Arabs in burnouses, and three German prisoners of war make history by dancing 'a one hundred and twenty-eightsome reel'.

As well as keeping watch for Zionist saboteurs and snipers, he has to deal with an interfering lieutenant colonel, a group of innocent young ATS women, a chaplain concerned for their moral safety, and a soldier of the Arab Legion who locks himself in a lavatory, among other things.

During the early 1970s, Fraser adapted the stories into a screenplay "at the request of a rather eccentric Scots-American entrepreneur" but the project "died some distance short of pre-production.

"[7] Guard at the Castle was adapted by David Climie into a 30-minute television special for Comedy Playhouse, named The Dirtiest Soldier in the World, which was broadcast in 1972 by BBC1.