The Embarkation at Oleh-leh and the landing at Lampanas of 26–27 July 1879 was the seaborne opening of the last Dutch expedition of the first phase of the Atjeh-oorlog: the transport of the column of Luitenant-Kolonel Gerlach — 46 officers, 1,104 non-commissioned officers and men, 984 coolies and convict labourers, 26 horses, artillery and fourteen days of provisions — from the strand of Oleh-leh to the roadstead of the coastal village of Lampanas, at the foot of the Goudberg, whence the force was to march against the valley of Lamtoba. The event is narrated in sumptuous detail in W. Cool and G. B. Hooijer’s Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (1889), pp. 1–12.
The strand of Oleh-leh, 26 July 1879
On one of the last July days of 1879, at the break of day, the strand of Oleh-leh, ordinarily so still, was one movement of war-like bustle. Trains ran unceasingly to and fro, carrying from the Kraton — the former seat of the Sultan — infantry, artillery and engineers, coolies and convict labourers, horses and guns, ammunition and provisions, while numerous sloops and steam barkasses crossed the bay to the warships and transports lying on the roadstead. Six years the war had now been fought; millions and again millions it had cost. But after the conquest of the XXII and, a few days before, the XXVI Moekims by the energetic civil and military Governor, Generaal van der Heijden, the beaten enemy was to be granted no rest: a new column, under the Luitenant-Kolonel Gerlach, was to be forwarded by sea from Oleh-leh, whence, from Lampanas on the north coast, it would begin the operation against the Lamtoba valley. Of the country to be traversed and of its population almost nothing was known; rumours had spread that the people understood the use of poisons and applied them freely, upon which a military pharmacist was attached to the column and the utmost caution prescribed for the drinking of well-water. For intelligence, the chief of the recording brigade — 1e Luitenant G. B. Hooijer — had been sent in the Zeemeeuw with the chief Panglima Tibang to fix with Toekoe Mas, the head of Lampanas, the point of the landing.
From six in the morning the trains brought the troops in order from Kota Radja: at nine three companies of the 6e Bataljon Infanterie; at ten its remaining company and the ambulance; at eleven three companies of the 9e Bataljon Infanterie; at noon the rest of that battalion, the Mineurs, the staff of the expedition and the recording personnel. Embarkation followed at once: upon the Merapi two European companies of the 6e Bataljon and the ambulance; upon the Soerabaya the staff of the expedition, the artillery, the staff and three companies of the 9e Bataljon and the recording party; upon the Borneo the Mineurs with the remaining European company; upon the Graaf van Bijland the staff, the two native companies of the 6e Bataljon, the Intendance and the unattached coolies.
Generaal van der Heijden was himself present aboard the Soerabaya, where Kolonel Jhr. van Rensselaar Bowier of the Marine held the command. With the staff officers he took the rijsttafel in the Colonel’s wide cabin: a European calf, fattened on board, was slaughtered for the occasion, “zoo heerlijk toebereid als slechts een Europeesche kok van een Kolonel der Marine dit vermag.” In the longroom the naval officers entertained the land force, and when at four o’clock all the boats steamed away from the roadstead, toasts to both services were still clinking. At half past eight, by bright moonlight, the squadron anchored on the roadstead of Lampanas.
The roadstead and the landing, 27 July 1879
A beautiful spectacle offered the otherwise so quiet roadstead of Lampanas in the morning of 27 July: the four great steamships riding stately on the calm, golden-flooded expanse, the little Zeemeeuw with loose white sails and colourful signal flags, and a pair of Achehnese praus with dark brown sails cutting towards the Soerabaya, where the column-commandant with his officers and the Kolonel Bowier under the awning looked on at the landing point. The guides had been sent ashore with the first light, in a separate sloop, to reassure the population.
At six o’clock the debarkation began. In the flet where the Colonel’s adjudant — the Luitenant ter zee 2e klasse Titzing — sat at the rudder, the ordering of the landing sloops was regulated; the flet darted hither and thither among the boat-trains, rowed by the powerful sunburnt hands of the Dutch sailors. The 3rd Company of the 9e Bataljon and a section of mortars under Majoor Ducroo were disembarked first: behind the steam barkas a whole string of boats, crammed with dark-blue-clad soldiers each pressing his browned rifle against him, sailors in white trousers and yellow straw hats at stem and stern. Before the surf the barkas turned, swung the sloops to the strand, and though the breaker wetted all above the middle, the troop stood quickly in order of battle on the uncontested beach — one company pushing forward at once to a good position.
At seven o’clock the commandant with his staff disembarked, awaited at the strand by the guides and by Toekoe Mas with the other chiefs of the coastal strip; an old woman, met laden with household goods on her way to hide in the wilderness, was reassured by Toekoe Mas and returned to her hovel with a lightened heart. In consultation with the headman the bivouac was chosen a quarter of an hour from Lampanas, on a grass-hill between two branches of a rivulet of pure water. At nine the 6e Bataljon debarked; by eleven all had reached the bivak, except one company which covered the landing of the vivres and the artillery — the hardest of the work. The horses were lowered, motionless in the sling, down the black side of the high warship upon the iron pontoon raft, trembling and rearing as they felt the beams beneath them; where the raft fell helpless between the foaming breakers, the restive beasts were thrust into the sea by the gunners to swim ashore. By one o’clock horses, guns and ammunition were ashore, but the unloading of the engineers’ materials and provisions ran to eight in the evening — for the materials, loaded last, lay atop, and had first to be got out before the needed vivres could be reached. On the ships the food was cooked for the troops: great kettles of brown beans or pea-soup came ashore and were borne in procession to the bivak, while the half-bottle wine ration made the officers’ meal — from the longrooms’ table — taste heavenly after the pressure of the day. In the bivak, laid out as a polygon, the orders for the morrow were framed; two companies of the 9e Bataljon under Kapitein Bedet remained behind as guard of the sea-base. The column would march on the next morning, carrying a three days’ supply.
Significance
The landing was the largest amphibious movement undertaken in the war since the descents of 1873; it was executed in one day without loss, over an open beach, against an undefended shore — and in the presence of a population whose quiet the book presents as one of the fruits of Van der Heijden’s policy. It opened the road to Lamtoba and, through Lamtoba, to Selimoen.
See Also
- March from Lampanas to Lamtoba (28–29 July 1879)
- Lampanas
- Oleh-leh
- Lamtoba column (1879)
- Majoor Gerlach
- Van Rensselaar Bowier
- Titzing
- Toekoe Mas
- 1879
Source
Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis, door W. Cool en G. B. Hooijer (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1889), pp. 1-12. OCR-filename: 20260720_115822_DLP-135-Eene_schoone_bladzijde_uit_Atjeh_s_geschiedenis_Nemotron_OCR_v2_OCR.txt.