The patrouille was the characteristic operation of the Korps Maréchaussée in Atjeh — the small mobile patrol by which the corps pursued the Acehnese resistance into the interior, and which the 1930 jubilee number identified as both the instrument of the corps’s pacifying effect and the cause of most of its losses.
Character of the work
The corps waged “een guerilla tegen de Atjehers, die op dezelfde wijze den oorlog tegen ons trachtten vol te houden” — a guerrilla war against the Atjehnese, who sought to maintain the war in the same manner. The maréchaussées were “in den krijg gestaald” (steeled in war) and moved easily by reason of their hardiness and their light armament. To their tasks belonged “het afbijten van de spits” (taking the lead), the carrying out of omtrekkingen (turning movements) and nocturnal surprise attacks.
Colonel L. A. Snell described the routine: the enemy’s trail had to be followed in order to surprise him in his hiding place; the party plodded along untrodden ways in search of a camping place, of water, or of a settlement at which to replenish exhausted provisions. When darkness compelled the troop to bivouac after a fruitless day, it did so often in a downpour, on the mountains, where no tents could be pitched, the wounded carried along in tandoe; the men waited for dawn plagued by hunger and cold, a rock or a tree branch serving as a resting place, and sometimes passed the night hanging from a root.
Casualties
“De meeste dooden vielen gedurende de patrouilles” — most of the deaths occurred during the patrols. Over the period 1890–1930 approximately 950 members of the corps fell and about 250 were wounded.
The pacifying effect
The jubilee number attributed to continual patrolling a particular and specifically pacifying merit, distinct from the corps’s military value: “Het Korps Maréchaussée heeft er door voortdurend patrouilleeren bij de bevolking van Atjeh den schrik in gebracht; weifelmoedigen werden, in ons voordeel, tot nadenken gestemd” — by continual patrolling the corps brought terror among the population of Atjeh; the wavering were brought to reflection, to Dutch advantage. “Het hield de djahats terug van voorgenomen wandaden” — it held the djahats back from intended misdeeds. Precisely because so little was known of that part of its work — “de massa spitst zich op wapenfeiten,” the crowd fastens on feats of arms — the fulfilment of it had, in the editors’ judgement, given the corps its inner significance for the pacification, “uitstekende boven zijn militaire waarde,” exceeding its military value.
Endurance demanded
The demand made of the corps was “een krachtsinspanning… welke ver verwijderd was van het normale” — an exertion far removed from the normal. Restlessly it pursued the many bendehoofden (band leaders) with their panglimas and fanatical following, and the maréchaussées bore the fatigues and privations, the risk and the responsibility, cheerfully even in the face of setbacks — as when an expedition failed through treachery or force majeure, whereupon the task was begun anew with fresh energy: vaincre ou mourir (conquer or die).
W. J. Mosselman’s memoir supplies the interior view of such a patrol in his account of the wandering march in the Barisan mountains.
See Also
- Korps Maréchaussée te voet in Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden
- Brigade (Maréchaussée)
- Dwaaltocht in het Barisangebergte (Mosselman’s account)
- L. A. Snell
- Pacification of Aceh
Source
Het Korps Maréchaussée in Atjeh: De Atjehsche Garde, 1890 - 2 April 1930, Extra Jubileum-nummer of Het Nieuws van den Dag voor Nederlandsch-Indië issued for the fortieth anniversary of the corps (1930), pp. 1-16. Offprint DLP-143, Bibliotheek KITLV, accession 621 116 794.