Master of all the military arts, he is a sniper-grade marksman, expert in infiltration, a wizard at hand-to-hand combat, and an outstanding observer of the human condition and the psychology of command, yet he is an enigma.

Worshiped by some, despised by others, regarded by a few as a menace to be avoided at all costs, he proves himself to Dand MacNeill and the other officers when the battalion is called on to assist the civil authorities when an Arab nationalist demagogue whips up a riot in the Suk and sends it against the modern town outside the walls of the Old City.

The dignified, perpetually smouldering sheikh quickly earns the respect and affection of the Scots, especially after hearing the pipes and connecting the sound with the legendary soldier of fortune Sir Harry MacLean, who had been commander of the Sultan of Morocco's army.

The rank of Lance-Corporal in the British Army was described by Rudyard Kipling as being "... 'arf o' nothin', an' all a private yet,"[3] but a lance-jack is the one who is in charge of details or a squad in the absence of the real non-commissioned officers.

Dand MacNeill's aunt owns Wade's House, named after the British general who built the first road system north of the border with England through Scotland.

While officer-in-charge of a detail transferring ammunition and explosives about in a deuce-and-a-half truck, Dand MacNeill stops to visit his aunt and rest his men—and finds himself stuck in the middle of a battle of wits between local stillers, poachers, the Excisemen who are out to catch the illegal makers of the malt whisky, and members of the local gentry who want to catch both the stillers and the poachers — plus, of course, the contribution to the chaos of the inimitable Private McAuslan.

George MacDonald Fraser retracts the statement he made in the introduction to The General Danced at Dawn, in which he said that the battalion in which MacNeill, McAuslan, Wee Wullie and the rest served never existed, and that the characters themselves were fictitious.