Overste Scheepens

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tagsperson, officer, dutch, knil, marechaussee, aceh, military, pidie, aceh-war, murdered, 20th-century, colonel, peutjoet, sigli
aliasesScheepens, Toean Scheepens, Lieutenant-Colonel Scheepens, Marechaussee Commander Scheepens, W. B. J. A. Scheepens, Luitenant-kolonel Scheepens, Majoor Scheepens, Kolonel Scheepens, Kapitein Scheepens, Kapt. Mar. W. B. J. A. Scheepens

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  • honours
  • jubilee

Overste Scheepens — Toean Scheepens in the Acehnese idiom of the old hunter Datoek — was a Dutch overste (colonel) of the K.N.I.L. and a Marechaussee commander of the Korps Marechaussee van Atjeh en Onderhorigen in Aceh. He appears in two distinct roles in the sources: as one of the great patrol commanders of the war, sixth-named in Musket’s list of the Marechaussee commanders in Oost-Indisch Journael; and as the overste wounded by an Acehnese during a rechtzitting (court session) in 1913 who died of his wounds twenty years later in 1933, as recorded in Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L..

The List of Marechaussee Commanders

Scheepens is the sixth-named in Musket’s list: “Gilles Graafland, Van Daalen, Campioni, Christoffel, Van der Maaten, Scheepens, Watrin, Webb, Colijn, Geertsema Beckering, Darlang and the sergeants Nussy, Salowono, Pongoh … a colourful array.” The names of these famous fighters and Marechaussee commanders rang through the Indies like carillon music, and their stories of brave deeds, adventures, and peculiarities went the rounds as if they were legends.

Datoek’s Close Comrades

“I was a ‘heavy friend’ with Mister Christoffel, and Mister General Van Heutsz, and Mister Scheepens, and Mister Darlang, and Mister Boreel, and Mister Governor Swart. Very many, and all of them truly brave.” Datoek’s list of his close comrades includes Toean Scheepens — the Acehnese idiom for Scheepens, the colonial memory of the Marechaussee commander who was a close comrade of the old hunter.

The wounding (1913)

“Scheepens 1913 tijdens een rechtzitting dodelijk…” The Overste Scheepens was wounded in 1913 during a rechtzitting — a court session in the bivak — by an Acehnese wielding an Acehnese reuntjong. The wounding of the overste during a rechtzitting was an attack on the colonial army’s judicial authority.

The death (1933)

“Of this kind of wound Lieutenant-Colonel Scheepens died in 1933.” The Overste Scheepens died of his wounds in 1933, twenty years after the wounding. The long delay is the book’s marker of the lethality of the Acehnese reuntjong wound: a wound that could kill in 1913 or in 1933. The reuntjong wound was therefore both an immediate and a long-term danger: the soldaat who was wounded by the reuntjong might die of the wound decades later. Scheepens is therefore the marker of the long tail of the Aceh War’s wounds.

Significance

Overste Scheepens is significant in two sources. In Oost-Indisch Journael, he is one of the great Marechaussee commanders and one of Datoek’s close comrades — Toean Scheepens, whose name rang through the Indies like carillon music. In Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L., his death in 1933 twenty years after his wounding in 1913 is the marker of the lethality of the Acehnese reuntjong wound: the long tail of the Aceh War’s violence.

The List of Marechaussee Commanders

Scheepens is the sixth-named in Musket’s list: “Gilles Graafland, Van Daalen, Campioni, Christoffel, Van der Maaten, Scheepens, Watrin, Webb, Colijn, Geertsema Beckering, Darlang and the sergeants Nussy, Salowono, Pongoh … a colourful array.” The names of these famous fighters and Marechaussee commanders rang through the Indies like carillon music, and their stories of brave deeds, adventures, and peculiarities went the rounds as if they were legends.

Datoek’s Close Comrades

“I was a ‘heavy friend’ with Mister Christoffel, and Mister General Van Heutsz, and Mister Scheepens, and Mister Darlang, and Mister Boreel, and Mister Governor Swart. Very many, and all of them truly brave.” Datoek’s list of his close comrades includes Toean Scheepens — the Acehnese idiom for Scheepens, the colonial memory of the Marechaussee commander who was a close comrade of the old hunter.

The wounding (1913)

“Scheepens 1913 tijdens een rechtzitting dodelijk…” The Overste Scheepens was wounded in 1913 during a rechtzitting — a court session in the bivak — by an Acehnese wielding an Acehnese reuntjong. The wounding of the overste during a rechtzitting was an attack on the colonial army’s judicial authority.

The death (1933)

“Of this kind of wound Lieutenant-Colonel Scheepens died in 1933.” The Overste Scheepens died of his wounds in 1933, twenty years after the wounding. The long delay is the book’s marker of the lethality of the Acehnese reuntjong wound: a wound that could kill in 1913 or in 1933. The reuntjong wound was therefore both an immediate and a long-term danger: the soldaat who was wounded by the reuntjong might die of the wound decades later. Scheepens is therefore the marker of the long tail of the Aceh War’s wounds.

Significance

Overste Scheepens is significant in two sources. In Oost-Indisch Journael, he is one of the great Marechaussee commanders and one of Datoek’s close comrades — Toean Scheepens, whose name rang through the Indies like carillon music. In Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L., his death in 1933 twenty years after his wounding in 1913 is the marker of the lethality of the Acehnese reuntjong wound: the long tail of the Aceh War’s violence.

Career under Swart

Swart placed Scheepens, after captain Dijkstra, at Sigli, the most important troop command on the north coast. It is a mark, du Croo observed, of how difficult Swart’s striving towards his civil end-goal was, that even a man like Scheepens found in 1913, in Swart’s civil construction and in the constant increase of civil interference and civil officials, reason “to long for the end.”

Scheepens’s last letters to H. J. Schmidt before his death are quoted in the biography, including his account of the accidental killing of the unfindable Pang Bintang in July 1913 in the XXII Moekims: “His capture was such a stroke of luck as I have seldom seen … A few friends will be punished, but unfortunately the greatest thieves go free…” His last letter to Schmidt is dated 10 August 1913.

He also reported to Swart in 1911 the death of Tgk. Ma’at.

The murder of 10 October 1913

The murder of Scheepens arose from a trivial dispute over coconuts. In October 1913 Teukoe Béntara Titeuë, son of the oelèëbalang of the II Moekims Titeuë in Pidië, walking through the gampong with a few followers, grew thirsty and ordered one of them to climb a coconut palm standing on an Acehnese’s yard and pick a few coconuts. The owner, angered that the oelèëbalang’s son had not asked his permission, refused to allow it. The young Teukoe in his turn grew angry because in his view the picking was the oelèëbalang’s right, whereupon the owner threatened to bring his parang down on his skull. The Teukoe persisted in his order, and the owner did indeed strike him over the skull with the parang, causing a bleeding head wound.

The perpetrator was arrested and brought to Sigli to stand trial before the Moesapat (adat court). On the day of the trial T. Béntara Titeuë went to Sigli; at the entrance to the civil office the armed police servant on sentry duty took from him the visibly worn, gold-ornamented rentjong (dagger).

The Moesapat (“customary-law court”) sat under the presidency of Overste Scheepens in his capacity as Civil Authority at Sigli. Scheepens asked the adjunct-djaksa (assistant native public prosecutor) what his demand was, and he demanded the maximum penalty for slight wounding known to Dutch criminal law, three months’ imprisonment. One of the oelèëbalangs on the bench asked the Muhammadan adviser of the court what punishment he considered fitting. The Teungkoe answered according to Acehnese adat: “Loeka oelón sipat, darah oelón soekat, lhò’ oelón takat, diët lhëë ploh reunggèt” — “the wound I have measured, the blood I have measured, the depth of the wound I have sounded; the blood-price is thirty dollars.”

Hearing this, T. Béntara Titeuë sprang up in fury and abused the Teungkoe as “Kaphé” (unbeliever). “Jij weet heel goed,” cried the oelèëbalang, “dat ik volgens onzen adat (“customary law”) het recht heb niet alleen den man zelf, die het bloed van mijn zoon vergoten heeft, af te maken maar zelfs diens geheele familie.” He told the President that he understood that Acehnese adat could no longer be applied to the perpetrator, but that if the man were not punished with at least banishment to Java, he, T. Béntara, would be maloe (shamed) in the eyes of his people.

In vain the Civil Authority tried to explain to the oelèëbalang that his son, by improper conduct, was the principal culprit, and that Dutch law did not permit banishment for slight wounding. The oelèëbalang persisted in his demand, and when the Moesapat pronounced the penalty of three months, T. Béntara Titeuë suddenly drew a concealed knife from under his clothes and stabbed Overste Scheepens in the belly.

The Overste fell backwards to the ground; the adjunct-djaksa rushed forward, but had as his only weapon a wooden ruler. Then an armed police servant, an Acehnese, drew his klewang and struck T. Béntara Titeuë over the head. The oelèëbalang fell and died almost at once. Scheepens, having got to his feet, forbade any harm to be done to the oelèëbalang, but it was already too late.

With his hand pressed on the abdominal wound, Overste Scheepens walked on foot to the military sick-bay, saying: “that has gone well a couple of times, but this time it has gone wrong.” The officier van gezondheid at Sigli gave first aid, and Scheepens was bandaged and put to bed in the sick-bay.

Swart was at once informed by telephone and travelled to Sigli by special tram with the well-known surgeon dr. Dubinsky. But surgical intervention could no longer help. Scheepens died on 17 October 1913.

At the burial in the heroes’ cemetery Peutjoet, Swart delivered the funeral oration — and then, for perhaps the first time in all those hard Atjeh years, Swart lost mastery of his nerves: “the address had to be broken off.”

The monthly report closed: “Peace and order in the territory of Titeuë were not disturbed for a moment by what had occurred.”

Significance (du Croo, 1943)

The murder of Scheepens was, in du Croo’s account, the deepest personal blow of Swart’s governorship, and one of the “zware tegenslagen” he had to absorb alone, together with the flaring of resistance in the Daja districts and the sudden attack on Gosenson. Indirectly it also brought H. J. Schmidt back to Atjeh from leave before his time, since Swart could now demand a wholly suitable officer for the difficult Meulaboh post — “only by a chance — and that was, alas, the murder of Scheepens.”

The case remained the classic Dutch illustration of how even an Acehnese landschapshoofd could be driven to such a murder by the collision of adat honour with colonial criminal law.

Sources

Atjeh, door H.C. Zentgraff. Gedrukt bij Drukkerij “De Unie”, 1938, Batavia. OCR-filename: 20260709_002148_DLP-81-Atjeh_OCR.txt.

In the Maréchaussée Jubileum-nummer (1930)

The Overzicht van Onderscheidingen printed in the 1930 jubilee number of Het Nieuws van den Dag voor Nederlandsch-Indië records two awards to Scheepens:

Colonel L. A. Snell named him first among the old vuurvreters he remembered — “den zoo beminden Scheepens,” the much-loved Scheepens.

A bust of Scheepens adorned the Kerkhof Peutjoet near Koeta Radja, with those of Darlang, Vis and Webb, “als zoovele symbolen van moed, beleid en trouw” — as so many symbols of courage, conduct and fidelity, the words engraved on the knight’s cross of the Militaire Willems-Orde.

See Also

Source

  • Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L., by G. W. T. Dames, Maj. Inf. K.N.I.L. b.d. (‘s-Gravenhage: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 1954), chapter “De patrouille.”
  • Oost-Indisch Journael: Palaver om de tafel met het gat, by Merac, Toekan-Serie no. 2, ed. G. L. Tichelman (Haarlem: De Gulden Pers, 1947), the chapter on den zieleherder and the chapter Jagerslatijn.

Overste Scheepens — Toean Scheepens in the Acehnese idiom of the old hunter Datoek — was a Dutch overste (colonel) of the K.N.I.L. and a Marechaussee commander of the Korps Marechaussee van Atjeh en Onderhorigen in Aceh. He appears in two distinct roles in the sources: as one of the great patrol commanders of the war, sixth-named in Musket’s list of the Marechaussee commanders in Oost-Indisch Journael; and as the overste wounded by an Acehnese during a rechtzitting (court session) in 1913 who died of his wounds twenty years later in 1933, as recorded in Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L..

Generaal Swart, Pacificator van Atjeh (“General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh”), by M. H. du Croo, Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with the collaboration of H. J. Schmidt, Titular Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with a foreword by His Excellency Lieutenant-General K.N.I.L. (retired) G. K. Dijkstra (Maastricht: N.V. Leiter-Nypels, 1943), Chapter XII, pp. 119–121; Chapter XIV, pp. 139–141; Chapter XV, p. 145.

Het Korps Maréchaussée in Atjeh: De Atjehsche Garde, 1890 - 2 April 1930 (“The Corps of Maréchaussée in Atjeh: The Atjehnese Guard”), Extra Jubileum-nummer of Het Nieuws van den Dag voor Nederlandsch-Indië issued for the fortieth anniversary of the corps (1930), pp. 1-16. Offprint DLP-143, Bibliotheek KITLV, accession 621 116 794.

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