Biloel Zuid (Biloel South) was the Dutch fortified post founded on 15 May 1876 at the foot of the Barisan mountains south of the post of Biloel, in the IX Moekims, to cut the enemy’s easy road between his home ground of the XXII and the pacified XXV Moekims. The post, with its two blockhouse watch posts on the hilltops dominating it, was the scene of the surprise capture of the enemy gun position on 24 May and of the enemy’s revenge in the night surprise of 2-3 June 1876.
Founding
The post was founded by the three columns of the operation of 13-15 May 1876 under General Wiggers van Kerchem, who approved the emplacement on the morning of 15 May and named the work. Two companies of the 3rd column occupied the two projecting hilltops during the fortifying; the post was armed on 18 May and finished on 24 May. Its goal was twofold: to be the right-hand support of the projected closing of the XXII and XXV Moekims, and to protect the returned people of the IX Moekims — whom Toekoe Tjoet Bantah had been forced by the orang toenong to send back to the mountains for fear of an incursion.
The hill-top fight
The position solved less than was hoped, because the enemy at once built a good path along the mountain slopes around it, and because he covered other hilltops with small works and gun positions from which to fire upon and dominate the Dutch. Therefore Colonel K. van der Heyden, commander of the south-east line, ordered the surprise operation of 24 May; Captain Lucas took the gun position and its eight dead that were found, but two weeks later the unfinished west hill-post — 1 officer and 56 men of the watch, in a bamboo hut without a proper clearing of the slopes — was itself surprised at half past three in the night of 2–3 June; Lieutenant Bonga rallied thirteen Europeans on the descent and recaptured it at rifle-point.
Only then were the hill posts properly fortified: wooden blockhouses for some twenty men each, the slopes cleared, the plateaus ringed with abatis, randjoes, broken glass and wire, an 8 cM. gun emplacement on the west hill, and a broad path cut in the rock of its northern slope covered by filled gabions. Later small attacks on them failed.
Later role
The road between Biloel and Biloel Zuid, begun at once, long remained dangerous; through the summer the enemy’s sniping cost victims along it. But the whole south-east line — of which the post was now the southern end — became by the completed roads the safest line of Atjeh, and the new post stood as the anchor for patrols into the mountains at its feet: on 10 July a patrol under First Lieutenant Van Berg, from it, surrounded and destroyed a hiding party of Atjehers in one of the ravines.
See Also
- Biloel
- Biloel Zuid operation (13-15 May 1876)
- Capture of the gun position near Biloel Zuid (24 May 1876)
- Surprise of the west hill-post at Biloel Zuid (2-3 June 1876)
- Zuidoosterlinie
- Guerilla warfare in Groot-Atjeh
Source
Atjeh van 26 December 1875 tot 4 September 1876, door H. F. Meijer (Breda: P. B. Nieuwenhuijs, 1883), chapter VII, pp. 181–196, 229; sketch no. 4 (Biloel Zuid).