The pagger — the fence — was the defensive fence around the bivak (field camp) of a Marechaussee patrouille, built each evening to break the eerste aanloop (first rush) of a possible overval (surprise attack). In Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L. the pagger is the book’s set-piece of the bivak’s defensive work: a fence of tiangs (poles) at 1½ metre intervals with five blandars (horizontal beams) bound along, built with the klewang as the only tool.
Construction
“Een pagger had stevige palen, tiangs, op anderhalve meter en daarlangs waren vijf blandars opgebonden.” The pagger had sturdy poles — tiangs — at 1½ metre intervals, with five blandars (horizontal beams) bound along. The construction was therefore both sturdy (the tiangs at close intervals) and flexible (the five blandars bound along, not nailed).
The discipline of the pagger
“Het maken ervan [werd] altijd voorgeschreven, omdat men anders wel eens slappe broeders onder de brigadecommandanten kon krijgen” — the construction of the pagger was always prescribed, because otherwise one might get weak brothers among the brigadecommandanten. The pagger was therefore both a defensive work and a discipline: a brigadecommandant who failed to build it was a slappe broeder (weak brother). The prescription was the colonial army’s way of ensuring that the pagger was built even when the brigadecommandant judged the risk of overval to be low.
The pagger and the defence
The pagger was built to break the eerste aanloop (first rush) of a possible overval. The fence would slow an attacker long enough for the patrouille to take up its weapons. The pagger was therefore the bivak’s first line of defence: the work that gave the patrouille the time to wake, to take up the karabijn and the klewang, and to meet the attack.
The klewang as the only tool
“Het gereedschap was de klewang en verder niet” — the tool was the klewang and nothing else. The pagger — the tiangs, the blandars, the bindings — was built with the klewang as the only tool. The pagger was therefore both a defensive work and a daily act of construction: the patrouille that built its own pagger each evening with the klewang was the patrouille that could operate indefinitely in the rimboe.
Significance
The pagger is significant in Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L. as the defensive fence around the bivak. The book’s argument is that the pagger was both a defensive work and a discipline: a brigadecommandant who failed to build it was a slappe broeder. The pagger is therefore the book’s marker of the bivak’s defensive work — the work that gave the patrouille the time to meet an overval — and of the colonne method’s reliance on the klewang as the only tool.
See Also
- Bivak
- Klewang
- Korps Marechaussee van Atjeh en Onderhorigen
- Colonne Schmidt campaign against the Tiriō Teungkoes (1910-1911)
- blandars
- Atjeh-oorlog
Source
Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L., by G. W. T. Dames, Maj. Inf. K.N.I.L. b.d. (‘s-Gravenhage: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 1954), chapter “De patrouille.”