The Reconnaissance to Kroeng Raija of 12 August 1879 was a heavy day-march undertaken from the bivouac at Lamtoba by Majoor Ducroo with three companies of the Lamtoba column towards the kampong Kroeng Raija, through a wild mountain region never before entered by a European — a reconnaissance carried out on the very day on which the orders for the march to Selimoen, delayed a full day on the way, arrived from Lampanas, and therefore, as the eyewitnesses remark, a march that would not have taken place had those orders been known earlier. It is narrated on p. 37 of W. Cool and G. B. Hooijer’s Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (1889).
The expedition
The reconnaissance took place in the last days of the occupation of the Lamtoba valley, at the moment — the book notes in retrospect — when the order to march against Selimoen was received. Majoor Ducroo took with him the chief of the staff W. Cool, one recorder of the survey brigade for the mapping of the terrain, three companies of infantry, half the Mineurs detachment and an ambulance of fifteen tandoes. No artillery was allotted, so that the march could be made quickly; and quickly it was: twelve palen through the mountains for the column as a whole, and sixteen palen for the commandant himself, who with the chief of the staff, the recorder and a covering detachment pushed on to the immediate neighbourhood of Kroeng Raija.
Of what was found the book gives a sparse catalogue: some paseijs — small kampongs in the mountains — a few refugees of the XXVI Moekims, a white flag stuck out from a high tree, and an “over-great multitude of fresh elephant spoor” — besides colossal heaps, the fresh impressions in the soft soil which the marchers passed here and there. “Without doubt,” the eyewitnesses write, “great herds of these beasts kept themselves in this wild region, never before entered by a European.” Nothing further of note was met, and the column returned to the bivouac only at half past four in the afternoon.
The delayed orders
The tocht stood, in the book’s telling, in an ironic relation to the great event of the same day. At eleven o’clock that morning of 12 August there had arrived at Lamtoba, with a detachment of more than a hundred coolies carrying provisions from Lampanas, the service-packets of the Militaire Bevelhebber containing the order dated 11 August to march on the 13th against Selimoen. Those orders had already arrived at three o’clock the previous day in the beach bivouac at Lampanas and, had they been forwarded immediately — which with the high ground had to be done on foot — could have reached Lamtoba the same evening; and had they been known earlier, the heavy march to Kroeng Raija, on the day before the departure against Selimoen from which again so many fatigues were to be expected, would naturally not have taken place. The military commandant of Lampanas, invited later to explain the delayed forwarding, justified himself — the book records in a footnote — by pointing to the order of the Militaire Bevelhebber received with the same packets, to send 150 coolies with provisions to Lamtoba simultaneously; since these could not have marched off before four o’clock and would thus have had to cover the way chiefly in the dark, he had judged this inadvisable in view of the difficult terrain.
Significance
The march mapped a further stretch of the mountain arc around the Lamtoba valley and confirmed the emptiness of the country towards the east; but in the eyewitnesses’ own summing-up it is chiefly memorable as the measure of what an unfielded transport service cost the army in Atjeh — a day of extreme exertion by three companies and half the engineers, spent on the eve of the decisive movement and rendered useless, in its tactical effect, by a courier’s twenty hours of delay on the Lampanas road.
See Also
- Occupation of the Lamtoba valley (July–August 1879)
- March order for the Selimoen expedition (11 August 1879)
- Selimoen Expedition (August 1879)
- Kroeng Raija
- Lamtoba
- Majoor Ducroo
- W. Cool
- 1879
Source
Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis, door W. Cool en G. B. Hooijer (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1889), p. 37. OCR-filename: 20260720_115822_DLP-135-Eene_schoone_bladzijde_uit_Atjeh_s_geschiedenis_Nemotron_OCR_v2_OCR.txt.