From the death of Wauchope in the early morning, until the assumption of the command of the brigade by Hughes-Hallett in the late afternoon, no one seems to have taken the direction.  ’My lieutenant was wounded and my captain was killed,’ says a private.  ’The General was dead, but we stayed where we were, for there was no order to retire.’  That was the story of the whole brigade, until the flanking movement of the Boers compelled them to fall back.

The most striking lesson of the engagement is the extreme bloodiness of modern warfare under some conditions, and its bloodlessness under others.  Here, out of a total of something under a thousand casualties seven hundred were incurred in about five minutes, and the whole day of shell, machine-gun, and rifle fire only furnished the odd three hundred.  So also at Ladysmith the British forces (White’s column) were under heavy fire from 5.30 to 11.30, and the loss again was something under three hundred.  With conservative generalship the losses of the battles of the future will be much less than those of the past, and as a consequence the battles themselves will last much longer, and it will be the most enduring rather than the most fiery which will win.  The supply of food and water to the combatants will become of extreme importance to keep them up during the prolonged trials of endurance, which will last for weeks rather than days.  On the other hand, when a General’s force is badly compromised, it will be so punished that a quick surrender will be the only alternative to annihilation.

On the subject of the quarter-column formation which proved so fatal to us, it must be remembered that any other form of advance is hardly possible during a night attack, though at Tel-el-Kebir the exceptional circumstance of the march being over an open desert allowed the troops to move for the last mile or two in a more extended formation.  A line of battalion double-company columns is most difficult to preserve in the darkness, and any confusion may lead to disaster.  The whole mistake lay in a miscalculation of a few hundred yards in the position of the trenches.  Had the regiments deployed five minutes earlier it is probable (though by no means certain) that the position would have been carried.

The action was not without those examples of military virtue which soften a disaster, and hold out a brighter promise for the future.  The Guards withdrew from the field as if on parade, with the Boer shells bursting over their ranks.  Fine, too, was the restraint of G Battery of Horse Artillery on the morning after the battle.  An armistice was understood to exist, but the naval gun, in ignorance of it, opened on our extreme left.  The Boers at once opened fire upon the Horse Artillery, who, recognising the mistake, remained motionless and unlimbered in a line, with every horse, and gunner and driver in his place, without taking any notice of the fire, which presently slackened and stopped as the enemy came to understand the situation.  It is worthy of remark that in this battle the three field batteries engaged, as well as G Battery, R.H.A., each fired over 1000 rounds and remained for 30 consecutive hours within 1500 yards of the Boer position.