Pang Anoe was one of the most notorious djahats (bandits) of the Atjehsche guerrilla, long uncatchable by the Dutch brigades that hunted him. Two episodes from his career illuminate both the manners of the war and the Atjehsche woman’s bitter wraakzucht (vengefulness).
The wife who approached Van Heutsz at Indrapoeri
A particularly beautiful and impressive woman once presented herself at the commandant of the bivak Samagani, requesting that her man — a known djahat out of kampong L. Ara Toenoeng (VII Moekims Baët) — be overvalled in his schuilplaats. She was conducted under the escort of a group of jannen to Indrapoeri, where overste Van Heutsz lived; Boon, the later head of police at Soerabaja, was lieutenant and acting controleur. As she approached the residence of Van Heutsz, where several staff-officers were gathered, it struck all that she, with the démarche of a woman who knows who she is, without a trace of fear or humility, made a courteous bow to the colonel. Said majoor Otken: “Wat een buitengewoon knappe vrouw” — “What an extraordinarily beautiful woman!” — and lieutenant Sachse added: “à hauteur d’une reine” — with the bearing of a queen. And so she was: slender as a fir, admirably built, beautiful and stately, head uplifted, now and then glancing about her, awaiting what would come. She would speak only in the presence of Van Heutsz, and so it was done. She wanted the death of her unfaithful husband; an arrangement was made by which she would meet a patrol that evening and lead it to the schuilplaats of the bende. She never appeared at the agreed place. Perhaps she had second thoughts and old love won out over new hate; perhaps she joined her husband’s bende that same evening. The brilliant apparition of this rare and proud Atjehsche remained in everyone’s memory for a long time.
The visit to the captain’s concubine
The Kompeuni had its ambiguous relations with the Atjehsche bevolking, and an Atjehsche concubine of one of the officers — kept, as the custom of those days was, to learn the language and the adat — never gave up her contempt for the unbelieving Hollanders. It happened once that the captain of a patrol came home, and there in the back gallery of his house sat, with his concubine, several Atjehers — one of whom he recognised as a dangerous djahat who had many a patrol in the forests behind him but had never been caught. They sat cosily together, drank lemonade, smoked his cigars with a band, and bowed politely to the captain, without feeling less at ease. The captain could not say much, much less do; if it became known that here, in his house, with his njal, sat the notorious Pang Anoe, his prestige would be gone with the moon, and as acting bestuursambtenaar he could write himself off. So he made bonne mine à mauvais jeu; after a while the visit departed, not without Pang Anoe taking a new bow as one who knows his manners. The captain later made much promotion, and his portrait stands somewhere in the book — clearer Zentgraff may not be — but the reader must imagine his sour face when he tells of that visit, and how his patrols for months had to chase that meneer Pang Anoe through the worst bush before they could lay him out.
The end at Lam Meulo
Many years later a similar case — but with a tragic outcome for Pang Anoe — played out in the neighbourhood of Lam Meulo, when Boreel had the command there. He had returned from patrol that day and, tired from the march, gone to bed early. At half-past eleven one of the sentries gave a signal; an Atjehsche woman stood before the bivak. She was, happily, very carefully stopped at the first challenge by the guard; in those days the guns went off quickly in Atjeh. She told that she was the wife of the notorious Pang Anoe, a bendehoofd who had long remained unfindable, and that she knew where he would be that night. While she spoke she wound herself up more and more — Atjehsche women are very emotional — and told that he had taken another woman and she was cast off. And she knew for certain that this night he would have a shepherd’s hour with that new one; she would bring the Kompeuni.
Boreel found it a splendid chance. He had been chasing Pang Anoe for a time, had waded for weeks through the mud for that fellow, and was fed up to the back teeth. One had to reckon, however, with the possibility of an ambush; so she was given the choice: disappear at once, or come along with the patrol as guide, bound to the maréchaussée-lus, and at the other end of it, right behind her, a man with the klewang. She agreed to everything, if only they would follow her; she was even more tense for the adventure than Boreel himself. Half an hour later the patrol marched out, she at the spits, on the rope. She did not hesitate for a moment on the path, mostly through the forest; behind her, with the rope at his girdle, walked the maréchaussée who had to look after her, klewang ready in case she should suddenly try to leap into the bushes. They came, before the dawn outlined itself, at the kampong, and she walked around all obstacles to the house; with her the maréchaussée’s, slipping on inaudibly. Now they stood before the house in which he had to be, with that other woman, and in a few minutes it was surrounded, by the special technique of this work. As the dawn announced itself, Boreel summoned the man to come down unarmed, otherwise there would be shooting. The man inside — a man who had long walked the war-path and had often looked death in the face — did not think of surrender, but seized his klewang and suddenly stood outside the door at the top of the ladder. Before he could spring down, through the salvo, sounded her gilling cry: “Njoë boeët kèë!” — “That have I done!” He wavered, clutched about him, fell; he had two bullet wounds. Suddenly the woman tore herself loose, flew at the dying man and kicked him, kicked him again, from all sides, until he lay still. Then she went away.
Significance
Zentgraff closes the episode with the question: “Wraak? Wat weet het Westen van een haat, zoo bitter dat hij tot in de eeuwigheid wil treffen?” — “Revenge? What does the West know of a hatred so bitter that it seeks to strike into eternity?” The figure of Pang Anoe stands in the book as the emblem of the long, mutually contemptuous intimacy of the Dutch officer and the Atjehsche djahat.
See Also
Source
Atjeh, door H.C. Zentgraff. Gedrukt bij Drukkerij “De Unie”, 1938, Batavia. OCR-filename: 20260709_002148_DLP-81-Atjeh_OCR.txt.