To the Fusiliers fell the honour of being the first British regiment to enter the Transvaal during the war, and they took part in the hoisting of the British flag at Christiana, the first Transvaal town to be captured. A little later, the colonel of the regiment, with a force of under 120 men, went on to Potchefstroom, and there hoisted a British flag that had been buried there at the time of the peace of 1881, and, after being disinterred, had been kept in the possession of the family of a former commanding officer of the Scots Fusiliers. So distinguished was the conduct of the regiment in the South African campaign that, on the representation of Colonel Carr, C.B., the commanding officer, the white plume that had not been worn since 1860 by the Fusiliers was given back to them, as a recognition of their services. To a civilian this may seem a very little thing, but the regiment regards it far otherwise. As for the campaign in France, there are very few authentic records of the men of the regiment to hand at the time of writing, but from those few one can reconstruct a good deal of the work of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. One man tells that the Germans captured all the transport, which contained all the kits of the men, who were thus left with only the clothes they stood in for a matter of five weeks. Since this account came through in the latter part of October, it may safely be assumed that the regiment was concerned in the great retreat to the Marne, though no letter of those received tells of doings at Mons, Landrecies, or the very early battlefields. Still, it is not safe to assume that the regiment--or some part of it--was _not_ engaged in the first actions. One may picture what the men looked like from the account sent by one of them. "I got a bit of a shave a week ago," he says, "but I have not had a wash for over a fortnight." Kipling's "I wish my mother could see me now" fits the case admirably. Again, evidently concerning the retreat, the same soldier writes: "We got an order to stop a motor car one day, and as the driver pulled up a man tried to escape on the opposite side, and I collared him. He got into an awful state, and started pulling photos and papers from his pockets and talked in a very excited manner. He was taken away, and I believe he was shot the next morning as a spy." This might possibly have been at the position of the Marne, or between that time and the holding of the line of the Aisne, but it is far more likely to have occurred at the time of the retreat, when motorists on the roads were plentiful, and spies could do good work for their employers.