It was on October 6 that Major Chamney’s force marched into camp without horses, and on the following day Colonel Lumsden passed through Machadodorp in the Princess Christian’s hospital train bound for Pretoria. Having received a sufficient number of remounts from among horses that had been left behind by the Imperial Light Horse and 18th Hussars, the corps was ready to take its place in General Dickson’s brigade for the sweeping movement by which it was hoped that General French would clear the country between De Kaap Mountains and Pretoria. Nobody at the time thought that it would be rather more like a rearguard action, continued from day to day, than a triumphal progress. We know that from morning to night the Boers followed every movement of French’s columns, potting at them almost incessantly. No matter at what hour the British troops began their march or halted in bivouac, or how often they changed direction, the enemy was always with them, and always close enough to see, though not often seen. A more harassing march has probably never been endured by any force of similar strength in that country. All these things we know, but men kept for the privacy of their own diaries a record of the physical sufferings that came to them through hunger and thirst where food, if not scarce, could seldom be cooked because of the thunderstorms night after night and the absence of firewood. Notwithstanding all these discomforts, we find a cheery strain running through the unprinted records of Lumsden’s Horse, and quite a joyful note when by chance the means of making a fire falls in their way. Then somebody is sure to be provided with meat to cook, and we are told how Kingchurch unexpectedly produced ‘chops done to a turn,’ or Cobb’s stew ‘was a triumph,’ or how ‘the indefatigable Hugh cooked chops while it still rained, and after dark he cooked mutton for to-morrow.’ The chronicler, in his gratitude, says: ‘Such men deserve to be remembered, and to have their honoured names handed down to posterity,’ and so they find a place in this History. One night, when rain was being driven in sheets by a howling wind across the bare hillside, some of Lumsden’s Horse could find no better shelter than an ant-heap, round the lee side of which they grouped themselves, huddling together for warmth. Kingchurch, finding them there, said in his whimsical way that they had selected the ‘most epithetally uncomfortable ant-heap in all South Africa.’