The Eikhoren was the name painted on the watch-house rising above the outwork of the Dutch post of Lam Koenjit in Groot-Atjeh, one of a set of jocular signboards by which G. B. Hooijer measured the morale of the garrison during the investment of 1896.
The signboards of Lam Koenjit
Hooijer recorded that the ever-vigilant post commandant, Luitenant Creutz Lechleitner, hoped to prevent the enemy from penetrating: above the outwork surrounded by ijzerdraadversperring, within which the kitchen stood, rose a watch-house from which the enemy’s approach could be barred, and als opschrift droeg dat den naam van Eikhoren.
Other signboards — In de Villa Sans Souci and In den Soldatenhemel: alles vrij behalve muskieten (“In the Soldiers’ Heaven: everything free except mosquitoes”) — proved sufficiently, in his judgment, that the Dutch soldiers did not yet find the situation hopeless and had kept their humour. The mosquitoes referred to bred in the pools around the post, which was so muddy that it was called Lam Loempoer, mud village.
Comparable inscriptions elsewhere
At Kroeng Gloempang the entrance carried the notice Welkom in de restauratie van volkspijs, volkspijs being the soldier’s name for a case-shot shell; inside, the passage between the barracks was labelled Heerengracht and another inscription read Japan 5 gulden een flesch portwijn. At Anagaloeng the officers’ salon beneath the Achehnese house bore the inscription Monaco.
See Also
- Lam Koenjit
- Luitenant Creutz Lechleitner
- Heerengracht (barracks passage at Kroeng Gloempang)
- Kroeng Gloempang
- Anagaloeng
Source
De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh, door G. B. Hooijer, Gep. Luit.-Kolonel O. I. Leger, met 24 platen (Haarlem: De Erven F. Bohn; Batavia: G. Kolff & Co., 1897). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Centrale Boekerij, Amsterdam. OCR-filename: 20260719_140140_DLP-134-De_verlaten_posten_in_Groot_Atjeh_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt, pp. 14, 50, 52.