The few survivors of companies A, B, and C of the Black Watch appear to have never actually retired, but to have clung on to the immediate front of the Boer trenches, while the remains of the other five companies tried to turn the Boer flank.

Of the former body only six got away unhurt in the evening after lying all day within two hundred yards of the enemy.

The rest of the brigade broke and, disentangling themselves with difficulty from the dead and the dying, fled back out of that accursed place.

Some, the most unfortunate of all, became caught in the darkness in the wire defences, and were found in the morning hung up 'like crows,' as one spectator describes it, and riddled with bullets.
Who shall blame the Highlanders for retiring when they did?
Viewed, not by desperate and surprised men, but in all calmness and sanity, it may well seem to have been the very best thing which they could do.

Dashed into chaos, separated from their officers, with no one who knew what was to be done, the first necessity was to gain shelter from this deadly fire, which had already stretched six hundred of their number upon the ground.