It was my section’s turn to do the scouting, and they did very well, getting information that there was a train and fifty men in the station this side of the Vaal. Two other regiments of Mounted Infantry each sent out an officer’s patrol of about fifty men, and each came back full split. One of their officers told my scouts that if they did not wish to be shot they had better clear, but Peddie thought this was not business; he, being in charge of the advanced scouts, went on till they were fired on and then halted. We had to wait for orders to advance for about half an hour, and saw the train steam out of the station and over the bridge and presently blow up one span. With a dash we could have caught the men and train, and probably saved the bridge, as we had two Maxims, and we could easily have driven the Boers off. We then crossed the river and drove their rearguard out of Vereeniging. They took the opportunity of burning a large store of mealies at the station. Our guns got into them well as they bolted across the plain. We had a very nice fight, and everyone is much pleased, even the Chief of the Staff. Through all this advance, in which Lumsden’s Horse, with other corps of the 8th Mounted Infantry, reconnoitred ahead of the army, troopers who had been trained to field sports proved invaluable, and sometimes at least a match for the wily Boer. Nobody distinguished himself more by skill at this work than Corporal Percy Jones, whom Colonel Lumsden regarded as one of his best scouts, a man of great self-reliance, unfailing in resources, and with a very keen eye for a country, so that he never allowed the section of which he was leader to be entrapped or surprised. For repeated acts of daring enterprise he was promoted to the rank of sergeant and given the ‘Distinguished Conduct’ Medal. Others who, being selected for some specially difficult or dangerous duty, had on occasion distinguished themselves as scouts, or who, by actions of individual gallantry, won mention in despatches, with subsequent honours, were Trooper Preston (D.C.M.), Trooper H.N. Betts (D.C.M.), Trooper W.B. Dexter (D.C.M.), and Corporal G. Peddie. Trooper H.R. Parks, Sergeant Dale, Sergeant Llewhellin, and Corporal C.E. Turner also performed meritorious actions, for which they were mentioned in despatches.[12] Though little has been said of the privations endured by our soldiers during their forced marches from Kroonstad to reach the Vaal River before its steep sandy banks could be made formidable by entrenchments, as the Modder was, some troops suffered severely from want of sufficient food, and nearly all were on short rations. It is certain, however, that not many could have been so near the ravenous stage of starvation as a private in one colonial corps, of whose act a trooper of Lumsden’s Horse writes: