Patjol — glossed by P. H. R. Beuming as Indische graafschop, the Indies digging spade — was the hoe-like digging tool of the archipelago.
It appears in his narrative of the sharpshooter of Biloel as evidence of how the Acehnese marksman had prepared his position. After the man was killed at dawn the patrol discovered, in the burnt-off alang-alang field behind a bamboo thicket, a trench about a metre deep and a metre wide extending some ten metres to either side, its opening ingeniously covered with high grass. In deze loopgraaf werden nog gevonden een klewang en een patjol — in this trench were found a klewang and a patjol, the tool with which the trench had been dug.
Account in Hooijer’s De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh (1897)
The patjol was the broad hoe of the Malay archipelago, used by the Achehnese for cultivation and, in the Atjeh-oorlog, for the rapid construction of siege trenches.
Use at Tjot Rang
G. B. Hooijer recorded that during the investment of Tjot Rang in April 1896, op 75 Meter afstand van de benteng maakten de, in het omgaan met den patjol zoo bekwame Atjehers, een 50 meters lange loopgraaf waaruit met geweer en lilla de post onder vuur genomen werd — at seventy-five metres’ distance from the benteng, the Achehnese, so skilled in handling the patjol, made a trench fifty metres long from which the post was taken under fire with rifle and lilla.
The observation is one of several in which Hooijer credited the Achehnese with practical field-engineering skill equal or superior to the Dutch.
See Also
Sources
Schetsen uit den strijd op Groot-Atjeh, met speciaal vervaardigde kaart en toepasselijke photo’s, bewerkt door P. H. R. Beuming, oud-onderofficier van het Ned.-Indische Leger (Amsterdam, December 1911; uitgegeven ten bate van het te stichten Herstellingsoord voor Rijks-Ambtenaren). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Br N 82-144
Acknowledgement of sources. The material in this article derives from Schetsen uit den strijd op Groot-Atjeh, met speciaal vervaardigde kaart en toepasselijke photo’s, bewerkt door P. H. R. Beuming, oud-onderofficier van het Ned.-Indische Leger (Amsterdam, December 1911). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.
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, p. 36.
Acknowledgement of sources. This article is a single consolidated account combining the material previously held in this entry with the account given in De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh (1897) by G. B. Hooijer. Dutch terminology has been rendered in English, the original Dutch being retained only in direct quotations and in bibliographic citations.