Lowe was an officier van gezondheid 1e klasse (medical officer first class) of the Netherlands East Indies Army who served in 1879 as chief of the medical service of the Lamtoba column during the expedition to Lampanas, Lamtoba and Selimoen, as recorded in W. Cool and G. B. Hooijer’s Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (1889). His establishment comprised a second medical officer — the Dane Nöckedved — twenty orderlies, a military pharmacist (attached for the chemical testing of the well-water, on account of the rumours that the population of the district was skilled in the use of poisons), and a train of tandoes (doolies) for the carriage of the sick.
The campaign
On the march into the Lamtoba valley on 29 July 1879, when shots from a steep height on the left wounded a European fusilier and two convict labourers attached to the mortars, the wounded were at once dressed by Lowe. In the occupied valley his duties widened with the appearance of epidemic disease: when, in the refugee capture of the night march, several of the sixty-seven prisoners brought in were found covered with an eruption, the Eerstaanwezend Officier van Gezondheid was called to examine it and pronounced it to be smallpox (pokken) — the appearance of which in the valley was at once reported by him through the column-commander to the Militaire Bevelhebber, and which led first to the removal of the sufferers from the bivak and ultimately to the order for the whole column’s withdrawal and quarantine.
During the return march from Selimoen, Lowe accompanied — together with the chief of staff, W. Cool — the rear division, where the ambulance’s claims mounted with every hour of the climb; at the close-range affair in the brushwood he received, at a few paces’ distance, the fire of the hidden Achehnese skirmishers at the same moment as the chief of staff. On the final departure from Lamtoba on 22 August he accompanied the first, fast-marching division of sick, devising — since the number of bearers and tandoes no longer sufficed — the carriage of the sick in blankets arranged for the purpose.
In the quarantine camp at Lampanas the doctor held, the authors record, a daily exact inspection of the bivak; nevertheless the sick-rate rose with each day. Of the column’s 2,234 men, 769 were within a month dead (39), evacuated (346), in the ambulance (127) or quarter-sick (267) — the statistical reckoning on which the book’s sombre verdict on tropical campaigning rests.
See Also
- Nöckedved
- Lamtoba column (1879)
- Occupation of the Lamtoba valley (July–August 1879)
- Quarantine at Lampanas (August–September 1879)
- Evacuation of the Lamtoba valley (21–23 August 1879)
- 1879
Source
Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis, door W. Cool en G. B. Hooijer (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1889), pp. 4, 6, 20, 31, 62-63, 66, 69-71. OCR-filename: 20260720_115822_DLP-135-Eene_schoone_bladzijde_uit_Atjeh_s_geschiedenis_Nemotron_OCR_v2_OCR.txt.