The dwaaltocht in het Barisangebergte — the wandering march in the Barisan mountains — was the episode of privation and near-starvation recounted in the 1930 Maréchaussée jubilee number by the former maréchaussée W. J. Mosselman in his memoir Herinnering van een oud-Maréchaussee, addressed directly to the indigenous soldiers he had commanded.
The march
Mosselman recalled a patrol that lost its way in the mountains. The party had captured ample supplies of katella (cassava) and maize on ladangs far in the Barisan range, yet without salt “takelden wij af als sneeuw voor de zon” — they wasted away like snow before the sun. He described weeks without salt, and the dragging of themselves onward “door het eindelooze en onbarmhartige oerwoud” — through the endless and merciless primeval forest, through frightening heavy terrain, past roaring waterfalls, through death-threatening rapids and rivers in bandjir (flood), stumbling over the mirror-smooth boulders of the mountain streams, into ravines and out of them, over ridges and mountain backs with dizzyingly steep rock walls to which they had to cling with hands and feet, because a single false step could mean death.
He recalled his own “keelsnoerenden, zenuwsloopenden angst” — throat-constricting, nerve-destroying fear — each time a new and seemingly insurmountable obstacle grinned at them and barred the way, while he looked at his men’s saltless and weakened bodies, and when evasion was impossible and the repeated undertaking of almost superhuman exertion was their only chance of survival.
The last tin of oatmeal
At the extremity of the march the party had already been on half rations for eight days, and for the last three days had had only batang rottan (rattan stems) and daoen pakis (fern leaves). On the day Mosselman described, they had not even been able to obtain that.
He then opened his last tin of oatmeal, threw it into a petroleum tin, and with twenty men made their meal of it — the three permanent dwangarbeiders (convict labourers) included, of whom Mosselman wrote that although in their free days they had been murderers and rogues, they had for years been the party’s faithful companions and carriers. “Wat hebben we toen van dat blik boeboer gesmuld” — how we feasted on that tin of porridge — and although the boeboer (gruel) was thin, everyone got something into his stomach.
Mosselman addressed a reproach and an apology to one man by name: “Mioen, wat heb ik jou toen een pak rammel gegeven!” — Mioen, what a hiding I gave you then — because Mioen had scooped his whole pannikin full from the pot without thinking of his comrades, from a tin Mosselman had saved so carefully for the direst need. He recorded that Mioen had not taken the blow amiss, any more than the men resented blows from their own comrades.
The endurance of the men
Mosselman set down what he remembered of his men’s conduct: their resignation under each new trial, and “de heldhaftigheid, waarmede de zwaksten onder jelui telkens opnieuw hun afgetobde body dwongen tot nog één uiterste krachtsinspanning” — the heroism with which the weakest among them forced their worn-out bodies again and again to one more extreme effort, so as not to become a burden to their comrades. Men refused to be carried, because they understood that the giving-up of one could cause the destruction of all. The stronger among them, he wrote, followed the march of suffering already loaded with their own equipment and additionally burdened with the packs and weapons of comrades who were near collapse — a comradely fidelity that moved the heart of the hardened and hardened-again soldier.
He recalled too their “ongekunsteld vertrouwen” — unaffected trust — in their Bapa, their Toekoe, who would also bring them out where he had brought them in; and wrote that this trust was what kept him himself upright and gave him the will-power to prevent them from sinking, to hold them in harness and to compel them to march on, they in turn helping to preserve his morale by an unconcerned outward bearing.
The return
The turning point came when fresh tracks and other signs announced that they were nearing inhabited parts and had escaped the grip of the wilderness. “Hoe toen het leven in jelui oogen terugkeerde” — how life then returned into their eyes; an electric shock seemed to run through them, and the last stretch to the inhabited world was mere child’s play. The finding of salt, meat and rice, and a couple of days’ rest, sufficed to metamorphose them into his old cheerful little troop, which returned as carelessly as before into the same terrain, sought out the point at which they had lost their way, and there resumed the interrupted march to carry out the assignment given.
See Also
- W. J. Mosselman
- Patrouille (Maréchaussée)
- Korps Maréchaussée te voet in Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden
- Barisan
- Het Korps Maréchaussée in Atjeh (Jubileum-nummer 1930)
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.