What happened to this Git repo and how can I restore sanity to it?
<p>I returned from a conference and have found a delightful oddity in the master branch of a critical project. A number of files I had committed prior to the conference no longer show up at the head of the master. </p>

<h2>Symptoms</h2>

<p>If I look at the history of the directory containing the missing files through either TFS's web interface or the integration in Visual Studio, the last commit to anything in the directory is me adding several of the missing files. There are no subsequent commits removing them. </p>

<p>If I navigate the project through the TFS web interface, my files do not exist in the directory.</p>

<p>If I examine them from the command line with <code>git log [directory]</code>, the last commit that comes up is one from back on August 24th, prior to the addition of the missing files. Five commits are missing.</p>

<p>If I execute <code>git log .</code> at the top level of the project, these five commit messages <em>do</em> appear.</p>

<p>There are two commits to the project that were done by a currently-unavailable coworker while I was gone. They do not touch the same part of the project that the files are missing from. There is a good chance the coworker last pulled from the master after August 24th, but prior to the five subsequent commits.</p>

<h2>Theory</h2>

<p>From my limited understanding, I am theorizing that the coworker ran into conflicts when trying to bring his changes in and, rather than resolve them, may have done a <code>git reset</code> in order to proceed, but admittedly my knowledge of those realms of git is shaky at best.</p>

<h2>Questions</h2>

<ul>
<li>Does that fit the symptoms described above? </li>
<li>Are there things in logs I can look for that would indicate such an action?</li>
<li>If that is the likely cause, how can I recover the five-or-so commits that appear to have been undone?</li>
</ul>