Overste Sievers was the Dutch lieutenant-colonel commanding the 3rd battalion which in October 1893 advanced to relieve the beleaguered Dutch post at Kroeng Kali in the XXVI Moekims and to drive the Moslemin from their three positions on the connecting road with Toengkoeb.
The relief operation at Kroeng Kali
After Toekoe Nja Banta removed the wives of Toekoe Tjoet from the Toengkoeb district to Lamreng, causing the general dispersal of that population, the Moslemin occupied the abandoned terrain and cut communications between Kroeng Kali and Toengkoeb. Hooijer wrote that by yielding to the exiled Toekoe’s earlier demand for the occupation of Kroeng Kali the Dutch had ons in een wespennest gestoken — thrust themselves into a wasps’ nest.
No time was allowed to pass before relieving the post. The 3rd battalion under Overste Sievers marched thither and was to attempt to drive the enemy from three positions on the connecting road with Toengkoeb.
The fighting
Sievers found, as Hooijer put it, that the geestdrijvers (religious zealots) had lost nothing of their courage when they entered the lists against the Kafirs, although Toekoe Djohan could usually chase them from one kampong (village) to another without much trouble. They defended themselves so obstinately and so long that on the first day he could drive them from no more than two of the three positions. One of those positions was the Messigit (Masdjid) Siem, in the taking of which Luitenant Weyerman and three men of lower rank fell and two officers and fifty men were wounded on the broad sawah (wet rice-field) plain before the mosque.
Instead of opium-smoking Moslemin, the mosque that evening sheltered tired Dutch soldiers who were to advance the next day to take the third enemy position as well; but during the preceding night the enemy evacuated it without waiting for them. Toekoe Djohan’s troops were to garrison the mosque, and on 21 October 1893 he appeared with a hundred fighters to take the point over and to quarter his men in the benteng of Toekoe Tjoet near Kroeng Kali.
Context
Hooijer noted that, apart from the failed attempt on Kaloet, this was only the second occasion in the ten-year concentratie period on which the Dutch, driven by necessity, had operated outside the line against the Moslemin with a relatively strong force. The earlier occasion, some five years before, had been the attack on Kota Toeankoe.
See Also
- Kroeng Kali
- Masdjid Siem
- Luitenant Weyerman
- Toengkoeb
- Toekoe Nja Banta
- Teukoe Oemar
- Kota Toeankoe
- Moslemin
Source
De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh, door G. B. Hooijer, Gep. Luit.-Kolonel O. I. Leger, met 24 platen (Haarlem: De Erven F. Bohn; Batavia: G. Kolff & Co., 1897). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Centrale Boekerij, Amsterdam. OCR-filename: 20260719_140140_DLP-134-De_verlaten_posten_in_Groot_Atjeh_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt, pp. 26, 32.