Djempit was a Dutch fortified post in the IX Moekims of Groot-Atjeh, on the sodden sawah plain between the kampongs Garoet and Betoeng. It belonged to the southern, second line of posts protecting the capital, Kota Radja, on the east and south.
The work and the terrain
The post was built around the old mesigit (prayer house) of Djempit — taken in the attack of 29 December 1875 — on a slight elevation of the plain: a square redoubt of coconut-tree piles with 45-metre faces and two round bastions on the diagonal, ringed by abatis. By clearing the whole terrain the garrison got a wide view over the sawah and towards kampong Betoeng, which — divided from the work by mud — was hard to reach. The Dutch road past the old Atjehnese paved dike and over the marsh near kampong Garoet, being built straight through the kampong, progressed only slowly in the first half of 1876; a road from the post by way of Ketapan Doewa, Mibouw and Kota Radja was only traced, not built, and Djempit remained one of the most isolated works.
Service
Garrisoned at the strength of one company, Djempit was, with Ketapan Doewa, Mibouw Zuid and Oost, Lo-ong and Longbatah-Mesigit, part of the southern or second line whose posts had to hold back the enemy bands roaming day and night through the whole pacified ground. It was alarmed twice in April 1876 — a little band tried to steal up on the post by daylight on 23 April, and the patrols of its garrison found the enemy blocking the way towards Boekit Daroe — while the wife of an African fusilier, fetching wood at the kampong edge, was attacked and severely wounded by Atjehers on the same day; and its fire spelt the alarm to the resolutions of the guerilla bands in every month of the year. Later in the year the post was counted with Kroeëng Raba in the western line; in March of the same year its garrison had drawn the burnt shell of a kampong southwest of the post among the night’s fires set by the enemy, as Meijer records.
See Also
Source
Atjeh van 26 December 1875 tot 4 September 1876, door H. F. Meijer (Breda: P. B. Nieuwenhuijs, 1883), chapters I (p. 24), IV (p. 66) and VII.