OPERATIONS ON THE VAAL
By October the line of blockhouses from Kopjes Station to Potchefstroom was built by the 2nd Battalion Scots Guards and 1st Oxfordshire Light Infantry, and that between Heilbron and Frankfontein occupied by the Railway Pioneer Regiment under Colonel Capper. Meanwhile Colonels Byng and Dawkins (from the south of Orange Colony) chased and ran down Boers as they sought to escape the blockhouse cordon, and thus thoroughly cleared the region. Colonel Byng made an effort to attack a concentration of 300 he had heard of at Bothaville, but on his approach they dispersed into the river valleys. Still, in the course of their operations and the return along the Valsch River to Kroonstad, &c., Colonels Byng and Dawkins secured eighty-one prisoners of war.
General Mildmay Willson organised a small smart force, under Colonel Hicks (2nd Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers), consisting of 250 mounted infantry, 2 field guns, and 5 companies of Infantry, to establish and provision constabulary posts and hunt Boer snipers. In the course of their operations and afterwards between Potchefstroom and Venterskroon they, with the assistance of co-operating constabulary troops, secured 42 prisoners (including Field-Cornets George Hall and Vander Venter), and a 7-pounder gun which had been taken from the post at Houtkop.