P. H. R. Beuming was a Dutch former non-commissioned officer of the Netherlands Indies Army and afterwards an administrative official in state service, who in December 1911 published at Amsterdam the collection of military sketches Schetsen uit den strijd op Groot-Atjeh, an eyewitness account of the Atjeh-oorlog on Groot-Atjeh in the years 1893 to 1897.
Service in Atjeh
Beuming served as an onderofficier in the garrisons of Groot-Atjeh and on the overseas posts of the east coast. He describes the sergeants’ club-room at Koeta Radja — de groote pijp — where the non-commissioned officers sat together and discussed the events of recent days, and where those who had been for a time in the rimboe had much to tell. He was at the benting Edi in 1896 when he first met Pastoor Verbraak, and afterwards returned to Groot-Atjeh, where he met the chaplain repeatedly.
His own observation supplies much of the detail of the sketches, but he is explicit that the whole is aangevuld door verkregen gegevens van oud collega’s — supplemented by particulars obtained from former colleagues — and he closes his preface with a word of thanks to all who by their information enabled him to compose the sketches.
The book and its purpose
Writing from Beukenweg 52, Amsterdam, in December 1911, and signing himself Administratief Ambtenaar in Rijks dienst, Beuming set out a twofold purpose for the book. The first was philanthropic: to help promote the object of the Vereeniging tot Ondersteuning van Burgerlijke Ambtenaren en Beambten in ‘s Rijks dienst — the founding of a convalescent home for state civil servants — to which the net proceeds of the ten-cent booklet were to be given. The second was to make more general the public interest in, and sympathy for, the operations of the Netherlands Indies Army.
He noted that since many men regularly passed from the army into civil state service, he hoped soldiers too would sympathise with his effort, and that the sketches would find a good reception both inside and outside the barracks.
As a witness
Beuming writes as a soldier and an advocate of the army, and his introduction is frankly polemical — see Beuming’s account of the origin of the Atjeh-oorlog. He observed that among the non-commissioned officers at Koeta Radja there had been some who could form no good conception of how the Atjeh war had actually arisen, and that on returning to the Netherlands he had found this to be the case in a very high degree with many of his countrymen, many of whom still believed that the expedition to Atjeh had merely aimed at extending Dutch colonial territory.
At the same time his sketches preserve much that a staff history omits: the vocabulary of the barracks, the routine of the benting, the tandoes and the baleh-baleh, the morning and evening gun, the burials at the Petjoet cemetery, and the service numbers of the European rank and file killed at Anak Baté. He is also careful, in the case of the Javanese soldiers who refused the north-face sentry post at Biloel, to distinguish superstitious fear from cowardice.
See Also
- Schetsen uit den strijd op Groot-Atjeh (1911)
- Beuming’s account of the origin of the Atjeh-oorlog
- Herstellingsoord voor Rijks-Ambtenaren
- Pastoor Verbraak
- The sharpshooter of Biloel
- Groot-Atjeh
- 1911
Source
Schetsen uit den strijd op Groot-Atjeh, met speciaal vervaardigde kaart en toepasselijke photo’s, bewerkt door P. H. R. Beuming, oud-onderofficier van het Ned.-Indische Leger (Amsterdam, December 1911; uitgegeven ten bate van het te stichten Herstellingsoord voor Rijks-Ambtenaren). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Br N 82-144
Acknowledgement of sources. The material in this article derives from Schetsen uit den strijd op Groot-Atjeh, met speciaal vervaardigde kaart en toepasselijke photo’s, bewerkt door P. H. R. Beuming, oud-onderofficier van het Ned.-Indische Leger (Amsterdam, December 1911). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.