Return march from Selimoen to Lamtoba (18–20 August 1879)

Properties2
tagsevent, military, march, dutch, colonial, aceh-war, 1879
aliasesTerugmarsch van Selimoen naar Lamtoba, the return march of the Gerlach column, Terugtocht naar Lamtoba

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The Return march from Selimoen to Lamtoba of 18–20 August 1879 was the homeward movement of the column of Luitenant-Kolonel Gerlach after the submission at Selimoen: three days of marching back over the same mountains by which it had come, under orders of the Militaire Bevelhebber, with a straggling train in which the sick could barely be carried and the provisions had, in the last resort, to be thrown into the ravines. It is narrated on pp. 58–64 of W. Cool and G. B. Hooijer’s Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (1889).

The night and the morning of 18 August

The return march was fixed, by order of the Militaire Bevelhebber, for 18 August 1879 — a decision the more burdensome since the day before, the vivres transport under Kapitein Van Rijn had come back from Ajer-Alang with a supply greater than expected, Majoor Lubeck having besides left his remaining stock of more than half a day at Gerlach’s disposal, so that there was provision for some three days in the bivouac: too little for a push through to Reng-Reng or Kemala, and far too much for the march back. The night had been quiet, “only the groaning and coughing among the hundreds of chain-gangers who lay side by side on the ground in the middle of the bivouac had robbed many a soldier and officer of his sleep.” Before daybreak movement came into that dark mass — except one man who was not to be moved to rise, and who would never rise again. The mandoors gathered their gangs and squatted them down in close rows; a troop of sixty to seventy coolies crept apart together and was not allotted to the carrying of the loads: those were the sick, who sat shivering in their sprijen (sleeping-cloths) and bound up the broad festering sores that the constant carrying of the pikoelans had chafed on their shoulders. Yet when hands still fell short for the carrying away of the sacks of rice and the other vivres, the European overseers went round in their midst too, and sought out those who shivered least or whose backs showed the smallest wounds — “in that manner the number of the sick diminished considerably.”

The march of 18 August

As the sun came up on 18 August, the return march was taken. In the kampong Lepong-Baijoe some inhabitants had already returned, and over the great sawah where nine days before the artillery had shelled the fleeing enemy, cattle were grazing again. Everywhere the population coming out of the kampongs showed itself peace-minded, to which — the eyewitnesses judge — the burning of Lam-Lepong, from which the column had been heavily fired upon, and the sparing of Lepong-Baijoe, which had not resisted, had certainly contributed. Only on approaching the mountains did shots fall, not from the settled population but from roaming bands. In view of the difficulties the column would have to overcome the next day in the crossing of the deep ravines and the climbing of the steep slopes, the bivouac was chosen as close as possible to that difficult terrain: at one o’clock a place was selected on an alang-alang-covered plateau at the edge of the first ravine, near a rivulet of pure drinking-water. Though on two sides covered by the deep ravine, a fully safe position could not be obtained because of the dominating heights in the neighbourhood; but the column-commandant with his chief of the staff and a covering detachment found, on the far side of the ravine, two dominating points which, occupied, would secure the rest in the bivouac. To each height a section of the 2nd Company of the 6e Bataljon Infanterie — a native company which had suffered much less than the European companies from sickness and weariness — was detached, whereby an end was made to the firing on the bivouac and the troops enjoyed complete rest for the remainder of the evening and night.

19 August: the climb under fire

Scarcely had the day broken on 19 August when the march was resumed. The two companies of the voorhoede had been sent ahead to take position on the plateaus to be passed, lest the column be fired upon during the climbing; soon after their advance they were fired at by some twenty Atjehers posted behind small heights to left and right, and though their fire was answered and hampered by the voorhoede it could not be wholly silenced, and it impeded in some measure the upward march of the column. The climbing of the steep heights along the narrow mountain path caused great difficulty, above all to the spanned artillery: besides the servants and the Mineurs detachment, ten to twenty dwangarbeiders with drag-ropes were allotted to every wheel, and thus at nine o’clock the artillery reached the edge of the mountain plateau.

For the coolies and dwangarbeiders the climb was exceptionally grievous. Though the consumption of a day’s vivres had freed about a hundred coolies, this number was insufficient for the many who could no longer carry loads and could barely drag themselves along; for every man who sank down from weariness or sickness — “and their number climbed disquietingly” — at least two chain-gangers were needed to carry him onward per tandoe. The column-commandant had therefore given the chief of the staff, W. Cool, who with this return march held himself with the rear guard, full power in the last resort — when hands for the transport of the sick should fall short — to throw the loads of vivres that could best be missed into the ravines. The carriers were not permitted to stand still or squat down, even to rest: foot by foot the long train of three-quarter-naked convicts, sweating under the heavy loads, climbed against the slope, “the pikoelans creaked to the measure, the loads — and also the seriously sick — swung to and fro,” while in the heat-trembling air only now and then the encouraging or goading words of the mandoors sounded. As at first the shots of the Atjehers, re-echoed by the mountains, sent a shiver through this crawling serpent of human beings, soon enough they grew indifferent to the whistling of the bullets — “some perhaps longing for the beneficent shot that would make an end of an unbearable suffering.” And despite all precautions the enemy succeeded several times, in the covered terrain, in firing on the transport at short range: once the chief of the staff with the officier van gezondheid Lowe, both with the rear guard, received fire from the heavy brushwood along the way at a distance of only a few paces; the patrol sent out in pursuit could not penetrate the thick forest before the enemy had vanished.

“Did thus the difficulties of a return march even after a prosperous and victorious tocht come clearly out,” the book reflects, “then one could now form a conception of what this must be when one is forced to it by losses and defeats!”

At eleven o’clock the vivres transport at last reached the edge of the plateau. On the same place as on the 13th, on the outward march, bivouac was now again made: the shelters of branches and alang-alang still stood for the most part, and once again the 2nd Company of the 6e Bataljon was placed on the dominating hill. The bivouac was not molested during the rest of the day, nor in the night.

20 August: Lamtoba

The next morning, 20 August, the Mineurs marched off half an hour before the other troops, under the necessary cover, to lay a passable bridge for the artillery over the marshy ground in front of the position stormed on the 13th. The 2nd Company remained in position on the height where it had passed the night until the long train, marching out at six o’clock, should be out of range; and scarcely had the height been left by the troops than it was occupied by the enemy, who from there began firing upon the achterhoede — but a few volleys of that rear guard, the 4th Company of the 6e Bataljon, soon drove him off, and the pursuit ceased entirely. After a once more exhausting march the column arrived at two o’clock in the bivouac at Lamtoba.

Drawing near, the marchers had been struck by a horrible stench. Patrols, sent out in the evening, discovered in some houses of the adjoining kampong the half-decomposed bodies of old people or of wounded, perhaps also smallpox-stricken Atjehers, who had been left there by their comrades and had perished of hunger and misery.

During the absence of the main column nothing remarkable had happened at Lamtoba. In the morning Toekoe Djoe Raman had arrived from the kampong Thingkun, bringing a sappi (head of cattle) as a gift for the column-commandant — a younger sister of this chief was married to Radja Koeala, the son of Panglima Polim — and he was summoned, together with the other wakils and kampong-heads of the valley, to the commandant for the following day. For, the day before the column’s return, the bivouac commandant Majoor Ducroo had received the order of the Militaire Bevelhebber that the column, in view of the occurrence of smallpox in the valley, had to leave it as soon as circumstances permitted and to hold ten days’ quarantine at Lampanas. With that, the occupation of the Lamtoba valley was at an end; the evacuation followed within three days.

Significance

The return march was the price exacted by the order that forbade the Gerlach column the easy road home through the conquered Atjeh valley and sent it back over the mountains by which it had come. It cost the column its last reserves — the carriers worked to collapse, the sick carried in blankets, vivres thrown into ravines — and it stands in the book as the deliberate counter-image to the “triumphal procession” of Lubeck’s column down the valley: the same victory, measured from below, by the men who carried it.

See Also

Source

Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis, door W. Cool en G. B. Hooijer (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1889), pp. 58-64. OCR-filename: 20260720_115822_DLP-135-Eene_schoone_bladzijde_uit_Atjeh_s_geschiedenis_Nemotron_OCR_v2_OCR.txt.

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