Broadwood had been outwitted by De Wet and very roughly handled.  With a crippled and maimed force he was lying between the jaws of a vice which might at any moment close and crush him.  The loss of the convoy was, from a tactical point of view, not an unmixed evil, as he gained thereby greater freedom of action, but the loss of half his guns was for the time being irremediable.  The careless and haphazard scouting from the Waterworks and Boesman’s Kop, in which he complacently trusted, had lured him on.[40] When it was reported to him that the spruit was in possession of the enemy, he could scarcely believe it possible.  Whether he or the officers in command of the artillery and the mounted escort were responsible for the extraordinary omission to send out ground scouts in advance of the column is not known, but the guns and wagons would not have been lost had this simple and customary precaution been taken.

Broadwood, who had no information that Colvile and Martyr were approaching from the west, and that the latter was actually at Boesman’s Kop, acted in the belief that he would have to deal with the situation unaided.  He ordered the mounted infantry under Alderson to hold P. De Wet’s force on the Modder, while the cavalry, supported by fire from Q Battery at the station buildings and working south and west of the Korn Spruit Drift, endeavoured to turn C. De Wet’s precarious position.  Neither of these operations was successful.  Alderson could barely hold his own; the turning movement, although aided by a few companies of Martyr’s force, was frustrated by small parties of marksmen whom C. De Wet had posted on the ridge in rear; and Q Battery was losing heavily.

At 10 a.m.  Broadwood ordered a general retirement.  No attempt seems to have been made to communicate with him by heliograph, and he was still unaware that Martyr had been on Boesman’s Kop for three hours, and was actually assisting in the turning movement; and that Colvile was hurrying forward to the sound of the firing with the IXth Division.  As the battle had begun in the Fog of War, so also therein did it end.

With the utmost difficulty Q Battery, which had been fighting in the open until only Phipps-Hornby and less than a dozen gunners were left to work five guns, was withdrawn.  The enemy’s fire was so heavy that the teams could not be brought up to the guns, four of which were run back by hand to the station buildings, which afforded some cover.  The fifth gun was abandoned, but by the heroic efforts of Phipps-Hornby and a handful of gunners and volunteers from the mounted infantry escort, four guns were brought away.

Meanwhile Alderson was fighting a rearguard action against P. De Wet, to cover the retirement of the guns, and when this was effected, he followed them, closely pursued as far as the Korn Spruit by P. De Wet’s burghers, who crossed the Modder at the Waterworks.  Before noon the remains of Broadwood’s column were formed up near Boesman’s Kop.  He had lost seven[41] guns, seventy-three wagons and nearly a third of his strength in killed, wounded, and prisoners.