The Evacuation of the Lamtoba valley of 21–23 August 1879 was the departure of the column of Luitenant-Kolonel Gerlach from the valley of Lamtoba to the beach bivouac of Lampanas: three days in which the question of the waarborgsom was settled by the taking of hostages, the Rijksbestierder Panglima Banten escaped in the hour of departure and his son and son-in-law were seized in his stead, the column descended in two divisions, and the whole force was re-united on the coast for the quarantine that had been ordered because of the smallpox. It is narrated on pp. 64–67 of W. Cool and G. B. Hooijer’s Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (1889).
21 August: the hostages named
On the morning of 21 August 1879 — the day after the column’s return from Selimoen — everything was put in readiness for the departure. Orders went early to the military commandant of the bivouac at Lampanas to begin at once with the building of barracks for the returning troops, and the Onder-Intendant present there was requested to send all coolies forward to Lamtoba by return for the carrying back of the stockpiled four days’ supply of vivres; they arrived the same evening, though more than twenty per cent had had to remain behind because of sickness. In the morning the chief of the recording brigade, 1e Luitenant G. B. Hooijer, surveyed the only road in the neighbourhood of the valley not yet reconnoitred — a mountain path to Pedir.
In the midday Luitenant-Kolonel Gerlach held a meeting with all the heads of the valley. When they were asked whether they would fulfil the fixed sureties — the Hok gantjing of ten dollars for every wooden and three dollars for every bamboo house that had been substituted for the threatened burning — they declared themselves unable to pay, not possessing so much, the more so as the population had also not yet wholly returned. It was thereupon signified to them that the Iman and the Rijksbestierder with half of the wakils and kampong-heads would have to follow the column to Kota Radja as hostages. Only Panglima Banten begged to be exempted, giving as his reason the fear he had always cherished of the sea; this request was naturally not granted. The hostages remained that day and the night in the bivouac, the other heads being sent back. Toekoe Djoe Raman, too, had come over, and when the commandant, in view of his family relation to Toekoe Radja Koeala, signified to him his desire, he at once showed himself willing to follow the column.
22 August: the escape of Panglima Banten
At half past five in the morning of 22 August, as the troops were making ready to march off, the column-commandant received the report that Panglima Banten had fled. The great broad-shouldered man had escaped through the rear wall of the hut in which the hostages had passed the night — a hut lying in the middle of the bivouac and watched by the police-guard — in an incomprehensible manner; at the roll-call held at a quarter to five he had still been present. A couple of platoons were sent out at once to try to lift him in his own kampong, since he could be but very shortly gone, with orders, should he not be found, to seize his sons as hostages. Meanwhile the troops fell in in the prescribed formation.
The column was split in two. The first division — three companies of the 9e Bataljon Infanterie, both sections of mortars and the sick who had to be carried — was composed of the troops that had suffered least and was to march through to Lampanas in one day, so that the sick could be lodged the sooner in the barracks being built there; for lack of sufficient tandoes, the officier van gezondheid Lowe, who accompanied this division, had devised the carriage of the sick in blankets. The column-commandant himself took the command of this division. The second division, under Majoor Coblijn — the 6e Bataljon Infanterie, the section of cannon, the Mineurs detachment and the vivres train — could not cover the same stretch in one day because of the weariness of troops and coolies and the delay the artillery would necessarily cause; and despite the reinforcement of coolies obtained the evening before, the number of bearers, with the ambulance claiming so many for the sick and many coolies and dwangarbeiders sick themselves, did not suffice to take along the vivres stock at one go, so that a part of it had to remain in the bivouac under cover of a company.
At eight o’clock the sent-out platoons returned, bringing with them, in place of the Rijksbestierder, his son and his son-in-law, lifted from his house; the Panglima himself had not been there and was nowhere to be found. Thereupon the march was taken up according to the fixed orders. The first division arrived at three o’clock in the afternoon in the bivouac at Lampanas, where the troops found barracks ready, erected by the 1st Company of the 9e Bataljon that had remained behind and the genie-coolies; the sick could at once be taken into the ambulance, and the officers had a long and well-provided table laid under a few magnificent giant trees, the ornaments of the bivouac, and there heartily entertained their exhausted comrades. Coblijn’s division reached its assigned bivouac at about the same time, whence that same afternoon all available coolies under cover of a company were sent back to Lamtoba, to bring up the remaining stock the next morning.
23 August: reunion at the beach
From the bivouac at Lampanas, on the morning of 23 August, all available valid coolies were sent to Majoor Coblijn’s help; and when he had awaited in his bivouac the arrival of the vivres train from Lamtoba and the reinforcement from Lampanas, he too marched off, so that in the afternoon of that day the whole column was again united in the beach bivouac.
That same afternoon the government steamer Zeemeeuw arrived on the roadstead with materials from Oleh-leh for the new bivouac at Lampanas; but it was too late to unload her with the tired coolies before nightfall, so that the second column passed that night without shelter under the open sky. Of Panglima Banten nothing had yet been heard. Messengers had been sent into the mountains by the column-commandant with the word that his little son and his son-in-law would be released if he returned, but they seemed unable to find him. The ~12-year-old boy, the book relates, soon won the hearts of the officers and soldiers, everyone vying to be of service to him — unwitting that his mother was already working upon the father (“cherchez la femme”) for the denouement of 1 September.
Significance
The evacuation converted the submission of Lamtoba into a durable pledge: where the valley could not pay its waarborgsom, its government — the Iman, the Rijksbestierder, half the wakils and kampong-heads — went down to the coast with the troops, and with them, willingly, Toekoe Djoe Raman of Thingkun, a brother-in-law of Radja Koeala. The escape and the bargain of Panglima Banten, the last adventure of the march out, gave the book its most personal episode of the war in the mountains. With the reunion at the beach on 23 August 1879 the field operations of the Lamtoba column were closed; what remained was sickness, quarantine and the slow counting of the cost.
See Also
- Return march from Selimoen to Lamtoba (18–20 August 1879)
- Quarantine at Lampanas (August–September 1879)
- Occupation of the Lamtoba valley (July–August 1879)
- Lamtoba
- Lampanas
- Panglima Banten
- Imam of Lamtoba
- Toekoe Djoe Raman
- Hok gantjing
- Majoor Gerlach
- W. A. Coblijn
- 1879
Source
Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis, door W. Cool en G. B. Hooijer (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1889), pp. 64-67. OCR-filename: 20260720_115822_DLP-135-Eene_schoone_bladzijde_uit_Atjeh_s_geschiedenis_Nemotron_OCR_v2_OCR.txt.