The March from Lampanas to Lamtoba of 28–29 July 1879 was the overland advance of the column of Luitenant-Kolonel Gerlach from the beach bivouac of Lampanas across twenty kilometres of bare mountain and stony river-beds to the valley of Lamtoba, where the fugitive chiefs and people of the XXVI Moekims were reported to have taken refuge. The two days’ march — narrated from the field diary on pp. 13–22 of W. Cool and G. B. Hooijer’s Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (1889) — cost the artillery its greatest exertions of the whole expedition, was answered on the second day by the first shots of the enemy, and ended with the descent into the valley and the submission of its Iman.
The order of the march, 28 July 1879
At six o’clock in the morning of 28 July the whole column marched out of the bivouac at Lampanas, with the exception of the 3rd and 4th Companies of the 9e Bataljon Infanterie and a part of the dwangarbeiders, which remained behind with the acting Onder-Intendant for the forwarding of the provisions. Since the force had to march with security measures through unknown country, it was divided — as the book explains for its non-military readers — into a voorhoede (vanguard), hoofdtroep (main body) and achterhoede (rear guard). The vanguard, commanded by Majoor Coblijn, was made stronger than custom demanded, for in mountain terrain a column files man behind man along narrow footpaths and support from the main body comes late; it comprised the 1st platoon of the 2nd Company of the 6e Bataljon Infanterie as voortroep (point), the rest of that company with three sections of the 1st Company as its gros, half the Mineurs detachment — to break the road for the guns — the section of mountain cannon, and an ambulance of ten tandoes under the officier van gezondheid Nöckedved. The main body under Majoor Ducroo followed with the 2nd Company of the 6e Bataljon, the 4th Company and three sections of the 1st Company of the 9e Bataljon, the other half of the Mineurs, both sections of mortars and the ambulance; the rear guard under Kapitein Du Bus de Valempré covered the long vivres train. The column-commandant with his staff kept to no fixed place, but held himself where his presence mattered most — as a rule with the gros of the voorhoede.
On an extensive unplanted sawah plain, called the Blang Tring, the troops drew up in this order: behind them the hills of the bivouac, at their left hand the white steep hill-ridges already glowing in the rising sun, at their right the unceasingly rustling sea, and ahead the valley winding away between brush-covered ridges along which the point was already moving, the recording brigade sketching the terrain in their field-books. More than a thousand metres long, the train moved with broad front over the dew-sprinkled plain — until it reached the dried bed of the mountain-stream Kroeng Plantoeng, so strewn with boulders that the mountain-guns had to be taken apart and carried piece by piece between and over the stones. From there the climbing began, and the mountain path rose almost without ceasing: the ridge to be crossed was nearly bald on top, sprinkled with large and small rolling stones that made the march exhausting for men and horses. At about nine o’clock the column descended past a second such rivulet, the Kroeug Plinten, into a small valley where an hour’s rest was granted; the ascent of the opposite side again cost the artillery exertions, and more than once that day it had to unyoke or dismantle the guns where the path between the rolling stones grew too narrow or wound too hard along the steep slopes, the Mineurs at its side. At every halt the column closed up and the ground right and left was reconnoitred; patrols sent to the dominating heights saw in the west bare summit behind bare summit, and on a single projecting point, a thousand metres off, a few Atjehers moving — while in the south the Goudberg rose ever greater, broader, higher and more sombre against the blue at every step forward.
At half past one in the afternoon, the column having crossed two more rivulets, Luitenant-Kolonel Gerlach decided — in view of the tiredness of the troops and the uncertainty whether water would soon be found again — to pass the night at a side-brook of the Kroeug Plinten which gave good drinking-water in abundance. The bivouac was taken in on both banks; dominating heights near by, on which Atjehers had been espied that morning but who disappeared leaving a white flag, were occupied; the Mineurs raised a hut for the ambulance under a clump of shady trees; the native soldiers quickly roofed their shelters of thin branches and broad leaves and then lent a hand to the Europeans; the officers lay under the eaves of their companies’ shelter on a heap of leaves spread with a piece of imitation leather. Not long after sunset a beneficent rest reigned everywhere; only at the headquarters, by the flickering light of a candle that drew all manner of winged creatures out of the darkness, the journal of the day was still made up — from that diary, kept throughout the tocht, the book’s description is taken — and the march-order of the morrow fixed.
The second day, 29 July 1879
Before the sun had risen above the horizon the column was again in movement, marching at six o’clock with the goal of reaching Lamtoba the same day. Because the officier van gezondheid had reported several seriously sick who could follow with difficulty, and to give the dwangarbeiders of the vivres train a few hours’ more rest after the fatigues of the two preceding days, a company of the 9e Bataljon remained in the bivouac in protection and marched at nine with the sick and the convicts.
Harder even than the first day was the exertion demanded of the artillery. The footpath, too narrow between heavy blocks of stone, was unusable for the guns; and when after a descent a narrow gorge choked with boulders had to be traversed, the pieces had once more to be taken apart. A number of dwangarbeiders had been allotted to each gun in anticipation, and they now rendered excellent service, carrying wheels and shafts and relieving the gunners of their tools; repeated times that day the guns were carried in pieces by men and coolies over distances of five hundred metres and more. The road led, besides, through covered terrain and urwald (primeval forest): the Mineurs first had to cut a path through lianas and tree-trunks, and the necessity appeared of posting the whole Mineurs detachment henceforward with the voorhoede. A very tall, fairly isolated tree commanding a wide view proved to have served the Atjehers as a properly fitted observation-post. These days also gave the proof — the book notes — of the unsuitability of the packing of the infantry’s reserve ammunition in little casks of fifteen hundred cartridges for marches in mountain terrain: on the narrow paths the three coolies who together bore such a cask on a bamboo pole could find no foothold abreast, got in each other’s way, and made the load the more oppressive.
The valley of Lamtoba
At about an hour’s distance from the valley of Lamtoba, three Atjehers presented themselves to the column-commandant — a Wakil with two followers, sent by the Iman of Lamtoba to say that the chiefs and people of the XXVI Moekims had fled to Selimoen and that the population of Lamtoba was as well-disposed as that of Lampanas. He was answered that the commandant would receive no envoys of the Iman — the Iman must present himself in person — and that the column would meanwhile march on. Half an hour later a second embassy of the Iman with the same errand appeared; these were detained to point out the best road to Lamtoba, since the guides hesitated and the answer could be carried by the first envoys. At about ten o’clock the column rested in an open part of the forest; and when it had moved on again, some fifteen shots fell from a neighbouring very steep height on the left, which the side-patrols had been unable to reach, wounding a European fusilier and two dwangarbeiders allotted to the mortars; they were dressed at once by the officier van gezondheid Lowe.
The voortroep had meanwhile reached an open plateau whence the whole valley of Lamtoba could be overlooked: two broad spurs of the Goudberg embraced it on both sides and, uniting again in the north-west, formed a sharply incised ravine through which the water of the rivulets rushed away; between the ridges, covered with alang-alang or short grass, lay the more than six-thousand-metre-long and almost equally broad plain, with the pole-built wooden houses of the small kampongs under heavy palm-trees, and, at the head of the valley against the broad flank of the Selawa Djanten, great strips of felled forest covered with rice-plantings. Above the foliage of every kampong a dirty white flag stuck out, while a few Atjehers moved quietly over the narrow paths between the rice-fields. Everything appearing so peaceful and the firing having ceased after the fifteen shots, no further notice was taken of it; and at eleven o’clock the whole column descended by a very deep and difficult hollow way and then through the rivulet Kroeng Kamaroe into the valley, where it halted until twelve so that the company left behind at the bivouac could rejoin with the ambulance and the vivres train. In section-column the force then marched up over the wholly dry rice-fields, and at about one o’clock reached a suitable bivouac ground: the outlying part of the kampong Lambada, surrounded on three sides by open sawah and sheltered on both sides of the amphitheatrically rising banks of the Aloever Lam Ping, a brook that yielded pure drinking-water in abundance. The valley of Lamtoba was reached; the occupation of the valley that followed would last a fortnight.
See Also
- Embarkation at Oleh-leh and landing at Lampanas (26–27 July 1879)
- Occupation of the Lamtoba valley (July–August 1879)
- Lamtoba column (1879)
- Lampanas
- Lamtoba
- Lambada
- Majoor Gerlach
- W. A. Coblijn
- Majoor Ducroo
- Du Bus de Valempré
- Imam of Lamtoba
- 1879
Source
Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis, door W. Cool en G. B. Hooijer (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1889), pp. 13-22. OCR-filename: 20260720_115822_DLP-135-Eene_schoone_bladzijde_uit_Atjeh_s_geschiedenis_Nemotron_OCR_v2_OCR.txt.