Charlie:

At this point in the war, the soldiers probably lost faith in the competence of their leaders.  Their repetitive retreats and the loss of entire battalions at a time was becoming the norm.  Soldiers were continuously forced to fight while retreating in a state of utter exhaustion.  This inevitably would lead to a lack of faith in the upper level leadership and would perpetuate the idea that the senior leaders were incapable of winning a battle and accepted losing fight after fight.