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A. Zijlmans was a first lieutenant of the Netherlands Indies Army Maréchaussee who, on 10 March 1942, succeeded to the acting command of the IIde Divisie Maréchaussee on the Westkust van Atjeh when Captain Kloprogge marched to relieve Tjalang, and who in that capacity conducted the evacuation of the Westkust women and children from Meulaboh to the Singkelse and fought the Battle of Blang Pidië on 17 March 1942. In the Dutch staff history’s account (Deel VI, Hoofdstuk V), Zijlmans is the principal subordinate of Kloprogge in the Westkust theatre.
Acting command of the IIde Divisie Maréchaussee
When Kloprogge marched out of Meulaboh on 10 March 1942 with two brigades for Tjalang, he handed the command of the remaining divisie — three brigades at Koeala Bee and three at Djeuram — to first lieutenant A. Zijlmans. Zijlmans’s orders were to organise the concentration of the European population of the many ondernemingen south of Meulaboh in the campement of that place, and likewise the indigenous women and children of the surrounding detachments (Koeala Bee and Djeuram), and to arrange for their onward transport to the Singkelse and the Lae Boetar onderneming. The transport problem was severe: 3,000 women and children — 1,500 from Meulaboh, 600 from Blang Pidië, 500 from Tapatoean, 400 from Tjalang and 600 from Lam No — were to be moved with only 15 autobuses and 20 passenger cars (about 500 per trip).
End of the Westkust evacuation
By 18 March 1942 Zijlmans’s column had linked up with the Meulaboh échelon under Thomson at Tapatoean, and the combined force moved south to Bakongan. On the night of 18 March–19 March 1942 the column, having been informed that a Japanese force of battalion strength was marching down the Westkust, struck south for the Lae Boetar onderneming. Zijlmans led the clearing column ahead of the convoys. The column reached Lae Boetar on 29 March 1942, where Captain Kloprogge — who had by then fought his way south from Lam No with the main force — capitulated.
Significance
Zijlmans is, in the staff history’s Westkust narrative, the indispensable subordinate: the officer who, in Kloprogge’s absence, organised the evacuation of the Westkust women and children, fought the Blang Pidië ambush clearances, and brought the convoy through to Lae Boetar. The staff history’s repeated emphasis on his vigorous conduct — and on the discipline of his brigade, set against the panic that overtook the noordkust troops — places him in the staff history’s small gallery of examples of competent Dutch field command in the Atjeh campaign.
Source
The 16–17 March Blang Pidië column
On 16 March 1942 the bivak at Blang Pidië — which held 1,500 women and children under a three-brigade guard — was attacked by a band of about 200 men; the attack was beaten off and the detachment commander cleared the surrounding terrain with two brigades. On 17 March 1942 Zijlmans, ordered to march to Tapatoean with two brigades, fought the campaign’s most sustained infantry engagement of the Westkust evacuation: about 15 hours of ambushes along the road from Blang Pidië to Tapatoean, with 200 to 300 hostiles cut down by the end of the day. The band was armed principally with edged weapons; a few carried firearms.
The staff history records Zijlmans’s personal conduct in detail. At one point on the march his brigade came under a klewang attack from about 50 men who attacked in groups of five rather than in a coordinated wave — a weakness the staff history attributes to the failure of the signal-attack (the posted Atjehnese man who was to give the signal having been shot by a Maréchaussee at about 20 metres’ range). Zijlmans held the brigade and supervised the searching of the brushwood, in which several more hostiles, often in hand-to-hand combat, were killed. He was supported by the European sergeant Evers, whose composed conduct — also in the fighting that followed — set an example for the others and was a great support to Lieutenant Zijlmans in the brigade. Zijlmans later personally shot an attacker who had come up behind sergeant Evers during the clearance of a wooden house.
The 15-hour march ended at Tapatoean at 22.00 on 17 March 1942, where a brigade from Meulaboh (under Lt M. C. Thomson) had arrived in the morning with the Meulaboh women and children. The march had covered a distance normally requiring two hours.