Boekit Daroe was the kampong about an hour’s walk south of Ketapang Doewa in the IX Moekims sector and the site of fierce fighting on 28 January 1876 in the third phase of Pel’s winter offensive. Its capture opened the Glitaroem bergpas (mountain pass) connecting the IV and IX Moekims, and with it the way into the IX Moekims itself.
The battle of 28 January 1876
The invasion of the IX Moekims began on 28 January 1876 as the third phase of Pel’s offensive, after the VI and IV Moekims invasions of late December 1875 and early January 1876. At Boekit Daroe — about an hour south of Ketapang Doewa — vinnig gestreden (sharply fought), and the enemy suffered a gevoelig verlies (sensitive loss). The fight was, Borel notes, the hardest the Atjehneezen had offered since the conquest of Lemboe on 7 November 1874 — proof that the enemy could still concentrate a strong defence at a chosen point even after the loss of the VI and IV Moekims. The Dutch losses at Boekit Daroe are not given in detail by Borel, but the gevoelig verlies of the enemy is emphasised as evidence of the seriousness of the fight.
The Glitaroem pass
With Boekit Daroe in Dutch hands, the bergpas Glitaroem, which gave access between the IV and IX Moekims, fell into Dutch hands the same day. The pass was, Borel stresses, the operational key to the IX Moekims: as long as the Atjehneezen held it, they could move reinforcements between the IV and IX Moekims at will; once the Dutch held it, the IX Moekims was isolated from the IV. The troepen then moved eastward, taking Lampermej and Oeleh Soesoe on 31 January 1876. At Oeleh Soesoe the enemy offered hevigen tegenstand but had to zwichten; several kampongs were burned. In the first days of February Lamkoenjit, Toeram and Beloel were also conquered, and the IX Moekims was fully in Dutch hands. From Toeram, which bordered the gebied of Toekoe Bait of the XXII Moekims, the Dutch made an inval (inroad) into that sagi on 3 February 1876, driving the enemy out of Atoeh after a heeten strijd.
Account in Hooijer’s De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh (1897)
Boekit Daroe was a hill and Dutch post west of Tjot Goeë in Groot-Atjeh, whose garrison was transferred to Biloel on 20 May 1894 — the occasion on which the road along and over the bare hills of the IX Moekims was constructed.
Transfer of the garrison
Hooijer recorded that the road shown on the opening plate, running along and over the bare hills of the IX Moekims, was laid out when de bezetting van Boekit Daroe, ten Westen van Tjot Goe, den 20sten Mei 1894 naar Biloel werd verlegd — when the garrison of Boekit Daroe, west of Tjot Goeë, was transferred to Biloel on 20 May 1894.
Under fire in 1896
Among the signs that the Moslemin still needed a lesson, Hooijer listed that onze post op Boekit Daroe werd aanhoudend beschoten — the Dutch post on Boekit Daroe was continuously fired upon — at the same period in which Toekoe Moesa Anaq Batee attacked the passer-goers between Lambarih and Anagaloeng and the population of the southern XXVI Moekims took flight.
Account from H. F. Meijer (1883) — the pass post at the foot of the Barisan mountains
Meijer describes Boekit Daroe as standing on an old, low hillock — one of the man-made mounds of the sawah, serving the Atjehnese rice-growers as paddy-drying floors and grave knolls — just east of the place where the Kroeëng Daroe issues at the foot of the Barisan mountains onto the great sawah plain of Blang Daroe. The purpose of the post, founded in the January campaign of Pel as one of the VI Moekims works, was to keep the pass of Gli Taroem in Dutch hands: the watch of the mountain path that ran between the IV and IX Moekims, the only communication between the two districts, with its guard house above the plain on the hill Boekit Terin. It stood, as Meijer explains, almost in one great pool of mud, surrounded by rawahs (drowned paddy hollows) in which a walker sank to the middle, needing help to be pulled out; between the Fort and the Atjehnese camp at Oleh Soosoe lay the open hill plateau conquered in the days of Pel’s conquest march of January 1876.
Close to its southwest bivouac stood the farmed but walled mesigit at the head of the brook, with the farmed bathing place lined in stone; both served the garrison’s bath. His garrison commanders’ name for the post stands at the top of the official record of 1876: Captain Marckert, who provided to the night operation of 8–9 August one of his African fusiliers as guide.
See Also
- IX Moekims
- IV Moekims
- Ketapang Doewa
- Glitaroem
- Atoeh
- Toekoe Bait
- Generaal Pel
- Pel’s offensive against the VI, IV and IX Moekims (1875–1876)
- Conquest of Lemboe (7 November 1874)
- Tjot Goeë
- Biloel
- Toekoe Moesa Anaq Batee
Sources
Onze vestiging in Atjeh, critisch beschreven, by G. F. W. Borel, Kapitein der Artillerie. ‘s-Gravenhage: D. A. Thieme, 1878. pp. 327–329, 336.
De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh, door G. B. Hooijer, Gep. Luit.-Kolonel O. I. Leger, met 24 platen (Haarlem: De Erven F. Bohn; Batavia: G. Kolff & Co., 1897). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Centrale Boekerij, Amsterdam. OCR-filename: 20260719_140140_DLP-134-De_verlaten_posten_in_Groot_Atjeh_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt, pp. 10, 50.
Acknowledgement of sources. This article is a single consolidated account combining the material previously held in this entry with the account given in De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh (1897) by G. B. Hooijer. Dutch terminology has been rendered in English, the original Dutch being retained only in direct quotations and in bibliographic citations.