Captain Taylor, in one of his amusing reminiscences, pays a tribute to the work done by Infantry soldiers:
Tommy certainly is the most wonderful all-round man, and quite prepared to do anything he’s asked. A whole company of Infantry being converted into mounted troops by such an order as ‘A company of —— Regiment will be Mounted Infantry’ was at one time quite usual, but they were fair troops in a month. One saw him making bridges and diversions for the same with the old jokes and quaint oaths; or doing butcher, baker, slaughterer, tailor, bootmaker, farrier, and all the thousand-and-one things he is taught. But he fairly surprised me at Barberton.
There we had suddenly arrived with a division of Cavalry ‘in the air.’ Within a week we had sent our Cavalry as far as Kaapmuiden—the point where the Barberton branch line meets the main one from Pretoria to Komati Poort. Our Infantry had repaired the numerous bridges and culverts, and we were entrained and taken back to Machadodorp by train. Every station-master was a junior British officer, the pointsman Tommy, engine-driver Tommy, who also worked the telegraphs, was stoker, bridgemaker, platelayer, wheelgreaser, &c. There were a few accidents, but not many, and a smash was only a joke. No wonder we are hard to beat.
The trooper correspondent did not look at things quite in that light, but perhaps he was travelling less luxuriously, and the humorous side of the situation did not strike him so forcibly:
It was raining all the time, so things generally were not at all cheerful, and the prospect of travelling for several hours in open trucks under these conditions did not help to raise our spirits. However, it was not so bad after all, as we stretched a huge tarpaulin propped up with sticks, rifles, and boxes, over the truck we were in, which was piled up to the top with the baggage, and managed to keep the rain out in this way. The rest of us were to follow on by the next train. We even managed to get up a game of whist, and this, with the perusal of such literature as we had with us and occasional snoozes helped to pass the time. We stayed that night at Crocodile Poort station, it not being considered safe to travel after dark. It stopped raining at 10 P.M., so, getting out of the truck, we built a huge fire and dried our blankets and boiled the inevitable coffee. We slept in the open, as it was quite fine then; but the dew was so heavy during the night that everything got sopping wet again by the morning. We started again at 9, but made very slow progress, as we had long waits at various stations on the way.