At 12.30 p.m., less than an hour after we had begun to retire, he reached the ground where the fight had taken place.

The dead bodies of our officers and men, stripped and horribly mutilated, proved how fierce had been the struggle, and the dropping shots which came from the fortified villages in the neighbourhood and from the ravines, warned the Brigadier-General that some of the enemy were still in the neighbourhood.

But these men, so bold in the confidence of overwhelming numbers when attacking Massy's Cavalry, were not prepared to withstand Macpherson's Infantry; after a brief resistance they broke and fled in confusion, some to Indiki, but the greater number to the shelter of the hills south of Kila Kazi, to which place Macpherson followed them, intending to halt there for the night.

This I did not allow him to do, for, seeing the heavy odds we had opposed to us, and that the enemy were already in possession of the Takht-i-Shah, thus being in a position to threaten the Bala Hissar, I sent orders to him to fall back upon Deh-i-Mazang, where he arrived about 7 p.m.
Meanwhile, Macpherson's baggage, with a guard of the 5th Gurkhas, commanded by Major Cook, V.C., was attacked by some Afghans, who had remained concealed in the Paghman villages, and it would probably have fallen into their hands, as the Gurkhas were enormously outnumbered, but for the timely arrival of four companies of the 3rd Sikhs, under Major Griffiths, who had been left by Macpherson to see everything safely down the pass.

Cook himself was knocked over and stunned by a blow, while his brother in the 3rd Sikhs received a severe bullet-wound close to his heart.
During the retirement from Bhagwana, Macgregor, my Chief of the Staff, Durand, Badcock, and one or two other staff officers, got separated from me and were presently overtaken by an officer (Captain Gerald Martin), sent by Macpherson to tell Massy he was coming to his assistance as fast as his Infantry could travel; Martin informed Macgregor that as he rode by Bhagwana he had come across our abandoned guns, and that there was no enemy anywhere near them.