Van Erpen Royaards was a 2e Luitenant (second lieutenant) of the infantry of the Netherlands East Indies Army, serving with the 1st peloton of the 2nd Company — a native company — of the 6e Bataljon Infanterie in the Lamtoba column of 1879. He is named in W. Cool and G. B. Hooijer’s Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (1889) as the only officer among the three wounded of the storming of the Achehnese entrenchment past Kepaja Doewa on 13 August 1879, the principal combat of the march to Selimoen.
The affair of 13 August 1879
In the storm ordered by Majoor Coblijn against the Achehnese position on the Selimoen road — the luitenant’s peloton turning the work by its flank under the company commander Captain Clerkson, while the second peloton pinned it in front — Van Erpen Royaards was wounded, with two men, in a total loss which the swiftness of the assault kept down to three. In all, 970 cartridges were expended by the column in the affair. The position, when it was afterwards examined, proved to be of great strength: an earthen trench — the thrown-up earth set upright to a thickness of a metre or more between hurdles and furnished with bamboo loops — a heavy abatis in front, and a palisaded tamboer, a kind of blockhouse, standing near the footpath. Had it been defended by the numbers for which it was evidently prepared, the authors observed, its capture would have demanded great sacrifices; it had been held by an estimated thirty men.
See Also
Source
Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis, door W. Cool en G. B. Hooijer (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1889), pp. 39-41. OCR-filename: 20260720_115822_DLP-135-Eene_schoone_bladzijde_uit_Atjeh_s_geschiedenis_Nemotron_OCR_v2_OCR.txt.