W. Cool was an officer of the Genie (engineers) of the Netherlands East Indies Army who served in 1879 as chief of the General Staff of the Lamtoba column of Luitenant-Kolonel Gerlach during the expedition to Lamtoba and Selimoen, and who, with G. B. Hooijer, wrote the campaign narrative Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1889).
Staff service in the expedition of 1879
Cool was added to the expedition staff as chef van den Generalen Staf — chief of the General Staff — with the rank of 1e Luitenant der Genie, and was promoted to Kapitein on 24 July 1879, two days before the embarkation at Oleh-leh. Because the officer designated for the detachment of Mineurs had fallen ill, he simultaneously received the command of that detachment. He was one of the expedition’s six mounted officers. At the landing at Lampanas on 27 July he went ashore with the column-commander; on the marches he remained, as was the usage, with the main body of the advance guard wherever the commander was.
His staff work, as the book records it, included the making of the day’s journal at the headquarters each evening — the field diary from which the book itself was later written up; the computation, at the column-commandant’s request, of the coolie requirement for a possible march to Selimoen — the celebrated recursive calculation of 1,600 bearers; and, at Selimoen, the hasty pencil note sent by the first departing transport to Generaal van der Heijden with the long-awaited news of the submission of the country.
The Kepaja Doewa episode
During the punitive expedition against Kepaja Doewa — the mountain kampong burned in punishment of its resistance and of the hospitality shown to the chiefs of the XXVI Moekims — Cool entered the burning kampong with the storming companies. Released more and more from control by the dense vegetation and the crackling of the burning bamboo houses, he found himself, as he recorded, with only a few men — among them a bugler and his servant — cut off both from the troops and from his own line of retreat by the flames. For the space of nearly an hour the small party had to wait amidst the glow until the fire burnt out, quenching their thirst with the water of young coconuts felled on the spot, before the road of return was clear.
The return march and the sickness crisis
On the return march from Selimoen, Gerlach placed Cool with the rear column and gave him full powers, in the last extremity, to have such provision charges as could best be spared cast into the ravines, should bearers fail for the transport of the sick. With the officier van gezondheid Lowe he received, at a few paces’ distance, the fire of Achehnese skirmishers hidden in the heavy brushwood alongside the road; the patrol sent out could not overtake them. During the subsequent quarantine at Lampanas he kept, the book notes, personal and continuous supervision over all the works of the camp, while the doctor held his daily inspection.
Author and polemicist
With Hooijer, Cool published in the Militaire Spectator of 1886 the series Het Atjeh-vraagstuk, in which the strategic criticism of the dismissal of Van der Heijden and of the dismantling of his conquest was set out at length — the argument resumed in the closing chapter of the book of 1889. Since the book nowhere distinguishes the portions written by each author, both were taken in the Indies and afterwards as the authentic voices of the staff of the 1879 column.
See Also
- G. B. Hooijer
- Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (Cool & Hooijer, 1889)
- Het Atjeh-vraagstuk (Cool & Hooijer, Militaire Spectator 1886)
- Lamtoba column (1879)
- Majoor Gerlach
- Punitive expedition against Kepaja Doewa (August 1879)
- Selimoen Expedition (August 1879)
- 1879
Source
Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis, door W. Cool en G. B. Hooijer (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1889), title page, pp. 5, 18, 26-29, 35-36, 54, 62-63, 69. OCR-filename: 20260720_115822_DLP-135-Eene_schoone_bladzijde_uit_Atjeh_s_geschiedenis_Nemotron_OCR_v2_OCR.txt.