The “coconut and sugar-cane excursion” — the “coconut and sugar-cane excursion” — was the last action of H. J. Schmidt as a marechaussée officer, undertaken in April 1918 in the Boven Wòjla near Meulaboh shortly before the retirement of H. N. A. Swart, after the death of the religious teacher Teungkoe Moet during his arrest and the subsequent klewang attack on the bivouac of the commander of Koeala Bhèë on 25 April 1918. It ended without a shot being fired, the population meeting the column everywhere with the customary gifts of coconuts and sugar cane.
The exemplary landschap (“territory under a native chief”) Wòjla
The account is taken from Marechaussee in Atjeh: “The territory of Wòjla belonged to the district of the bivouac commander at Koeala Bhèë, an energetic officer who made it a point of honour to have all administrative orders carried out as well as possible. He knew indeed how to stimulate the ambition of the chiefs.”
“Only the vaccination still left something to be desired. So the bivouac commander continually urged the vaccinator to greater activity… and involuntarily, and not incomprehensibly, forgot that the spiritual development of the population of Wòjla lagged behind its material development.”
Teungkoe Moet and the vaccination
In the upper districts lived a fairly influential religious teacher, Teungkoe Moet, who had instructed both the district head and his two sons in Qoran recitation — an instruction which in Atjeh creates a permanent bond of particular significance between teacher and pupil. This Teungkoe proved, on the ground of an otherwise contestable interpretation of Muhammadan law, a fierce opponent of vaccination, so that he even started an action against that vaccination and refused to appear when first the landschapshoofd and then the bivouac commander summoned him to Koeala Bhèë.
Such an attitude could not be tolerated, and so a marechaussée patrol was sent out to take up the recalcitrant religious teacher and conduct him to the oelèëbalang. “But: on his arrest Teungkoe Moet offered resistance with some followers and… was killed; on our side one constabulary man was severely and three lightly wounded.”
The klewang (“broad sabre”) attack of 25 April 1918
Shortly afterwards, on 25 April, the bivouac commander of Koeala Bhèë bivouacked with two brigades a day’s march from the place where that fight had taken place. “And… they bivouacked, suspecting no evil, carelessly, so that at about four o’clock in the afternoon, while the soldiers were bathing or cooking, three Acehnese hitherto friendly and known to the constabulary men suddenly attacked the unsuspecting men with the sabre.”
The assailants were all laid low, but the attack cost the troops one killed, three severely and four lightly wounded — “that is to say, a considerable reverse.”
Schmidt’s last action
When this occurred, Schmidt was not present at Meulaboh; only two days later did he return, and learn from the assistant resident that the whole of the Boven Wòjla was said to be in revolt.
He marched off immediately with four brigades from the other bivouacs, including two officers, reinforced the column at Koeala Bhèë with two more brigades under the bivouac commander, and with this — for those days strong — force began his last action as a marechaussée officer.
Although patrolling and bivouacking were conducted very cautiously to avoid further losses (the report indicated heavy resistance to be expected, since the two sons of the district head of the Boven Wòjla, the loyal Dato Sarong, were much attached to the late Teungkoe Moet), it appeared very soon that there was no question of general resistance: everywhere the gampong dwellers appeared with their chiefs, offering the customary gifts of coconuts and sugar cane, and made it known that it was by no means their intention to make common cause with the — in any case already fallen — resistance men.
And so the marechaussée, who had wanted to settle an account (twelve killed and wounded), had to be content with “naik goenoeng sadja” (“only climbing the mountain”) (“only climbing”); “the population showed itself so wholly peaceable that neither sabre nor carbine came into play.”
“It is known — and this is indeed characteristic of the closing piece of this constabulary chapter — as the “coconut and sugar-cane excursion”!”
Schmidt compared the quiet and well-disposed population of this Boven Wòjla with that of scarcely ten years before, when it would not have let slip so fine a chance of resistance and of becoming sjahid, “and he counted himself fortunate: the time of war and resistance was past…”
Significance
The episode is the closing piece of the military history of the pacification: an incident which, ten years earlier, would have produced a general rising, and which in 1918 produced nothing but gifts of coconuts and sugar cane. It also illustrates the recurring friction that vaccination generated in Atjeh — the same cause underlay the unrest in Groot Atjeh of April 1914 — and the way in which a zealously efficient administration could outrun the spiritual development of the population it governed.
See Also
- H. J. Schmidt
- Teungkoe Moet
- Boven Wòjla
- Koeala Bhèë
- Dato Sarong
- Meulaboh
- Vaccination Unrest in Groot Atjeh (April 1914)
- The resistance in Atjeh 1913–1918
- H. N. A. Swart
- 1918
Source
Generaal Swart, Pacificator van Atjeh (“General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh”), by M. H. du Croo, Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with the collaboration of H. J. Schmidt, Titular Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with a foreword by His Excellency Lieutenant-General K.N.I.L. (retired) G. K. Dijkstra (Maastricht: N.V. Leiter-Nypels, 1943), Chapter XII, pp. 128–129.
Generaal Swart, Pacificator van Atjeh (“General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh”), by M. H. du Croo, Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with the collaboration of H. J. Schmidt, Titular Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with a foreword by His Excellency Lieutenant-General K.N.I.L. (retired) G. K. Dijkstra (Maastricht: N.V. Leiter-Nypels, 1943), as quoted in Generaal Swart, Pacificator van Atjeh. pp. 124 e.v.