Clerkson was an infantry captain of the Netherlands East Indies Army, compagnies-commandant of the 2nd Company — a native company — of the 6e Bataljon Infanterie, who led the flanking peloton in the storming of the Achehnese position past the ruins of Kepaja Doewa on 13 August 1879, the opening combat of the march to Selimoen, as recorded in W. Cool and G. B. Hooijer’s Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (1889).
The storm of 13 August 1879
When, in the early afternoon of 13 August 1879, the advance guard of the column came under a fire from the strong Achehnese entrenchment astride the march route — an earthen trench more than a hundred paces long, fronted by a heavy abatis and flanked by a palisaded tamboer or blockhouse near the footpath — and the fire grew so heavy that the men, unprotected in the covered terrain, could no longer be held facing it, Majoor Coblijn gave the order to storm. The 1st peloton of the 2nd Company with its company commander, Captain Clerkson, at the head, drew round the flank of the position through a marshy stretch of ground — the dammed water of a spring — and between the bamboo abatis the enemy had placed before his own work, while the second peloton of the company, to which Coblijn had attached himself, engaged the work in front. The fortification was reached, the defenders fled in haste into a deep ravine, and so close did the stormers follow that one soldier caught an Achehnese by the head, retaining — to his regret — only the man’s head-cloth in his hands. The rapidity of the assault kept the loss to three wounded, among them the 2e Luitenant Van Erpen Royaards of the 1st peloton. An indigenous sergeant, Ramoudin, was the first, the luitenant-adjudant Popelier the second man inside the work.
See Also
- Selimoen Expedition (August 1879)
- Kepaja Doewa
- W. A. Coblijn
- Ramoudin
- Van Erpen Royaards
- 6e Bataljon Infanterie
- 1879
Source
Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis, door W. Cool en G. B. Hooijer (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1889), pp. 39-41. OCR-filename: 20260720_115822_DLP-135-Eene_schoone_bladzijde_uit_Atjeh_s_geschiedenis_Nemotron_OCR_v2_OCR.txt.