Colonel de Jongh was a Dutch overste (colonel) of the Indische leger who served as chief of the administrative service (intendantuur) in Atjeh during Pel’s command. In Borel’s narrative he is singled out for praise as the officer who, in the depths of the crisis of May–June 1874 and the bandjir of December 1874, improved the wretched voeding (feeding) and care of the troops at a moment when the bezettingskorps was being starved by its own logistics.
The Crisis of the Bezettingskorps
When Pel inherited the command in May 1874 the Dutch position was desperate. The voeding had been reduced to the reglementaire ration — often only rijst (boeboer). The hard-brood supply ran out fourteen days after the hoofdmacht left. The slachtvee was exhausted and over a hundred stuks were lost. The kazerneloodsen had no zijwanden; rain poured through. “Nimmer klonk een blij gezang binnen de wallen van K. Radja,” Borel records. By the December 1874 bandjir the situation was worse: more than five hundred sick had to be rushed on the first day to higher ground in the middle of the Kraton, the water rose to the roofs of the hospital barracks, more than five hundred sick and military died in the February 1875 cholera catastrophe in the Kota Radja ambulances alone. The administrative service, under de Jongh, had to find food, vivres, munitie and bouwmaterialen through a debarkation system at Oeleh Leh that Borel calls the most damagingly neglected operation of the whole occupation.
Borel’s Judgement
Borel, who personally supervised the debarkation of the guns at the zeehoofd, warmly praises de Jongh for verbetering of the troops’ feeding and care in the face of these conditions. The contrast is sharp with van Swieten, who had allowed the achterlaadkanonnen and one of the two companies of vesting-artillerie to be sent back to Java and who had promised that Kota Radja would become “eene aangename gezellige garnizoensplaats.” De Jongh’s work was, in Borel’s account, one of the unseen labours by which the bezettingskorps held out through the worst months of the war.
See Also
- Crisis at Kota Radja (May–June 1874)
- Bandjir flood of Kota Radja (December 1874)
- Cholera catastrophe at Kota Radja (February 1875)
- Bezettingskorps in Atjeh
- Kota Radja
- Oeleh Leh
- Generaal Pel
- Jan van Swieten
- 1874
Source
Onze vestiging in Atjeh, critisch beschreven, by G. F. W. Borel, Kapitein der Artillerie. ‘s-Gravenhage: D. A. Thieme, 1878. p. 167.