Kota Podjoet was the high Dutch observation post on the western side of the K. Radja perimeter, whose lookouts spotted enemy benteng (fortification) construction for the zuider-face battery and signalled range and direction by horn signals to correct the artillery fire. It was also the site of the principal Dutch military cemetery of the occupation, to which the dead of K. Radja were daily carried on “ominous little wagons” drawn by chain-gang convicts through the interior of the Kraton — a practice Borel singles out as injurious beyond measure to the morale of the living.
The observatory
The height of Kota Podjoet gave the Dutch a wide view over the kampongs to the south and west — Soerian, Poe Oe, Setee, Mandarsa Poeti and the sawah (irrigated rice fields) stretching toward Bital and Ketapang Doewa. On 29 August 1874 the post discovered the enemy building a benteng at short distance to the south, already nearly complete; range and direction were signalled to the new zuider-face battery, the first shots were corrected by horn signals, and the shells soon fell inside the work — the Atjehneezen were seen fleeing “head over heels,” abandoning guns and tools. The post was also the look-out that on 16 May 1874 was “ernstig bedreigd” (seriously threatened) during a heavy enemy attack on the eastern face of the Kraton, when the entire ooster-face was “voortdurend hevig beschoten.”
The military cemetery
Kota Podjoet became the burial-ground of the Dutch garrison from 1874 onward. Borel’s description of the daily passage of the dead through the Kraton is one of the most striking passages of the book. The dead, “simply wrapped in sheet,” were carried on a wheeled stretcher drawn by two kettinggangers (chain-gang convicts) from the hospital barracks inside the Kraton to the cemetery at Kota Podjoet; “these ominous little wagons had to go inside the parapet, past barracks.” Borel insists that the constant visible passage of the dead, especially during the May–June 1874 crisis and the February 1875 cholera catastrophe — when the dead averaged 15–18 per day, with peaks of 25 or 30 — was a moral injury to the garrison beyond the bare statistics of mortality.
See Also
- Kota Radja
- Kota Goenoengan
- Soerian
- Poe Oe
- Mandarsa Poeti
- Crisis at Kota Radja (May–June 1874)
- Cholera catastrophe at Kota Radja (February 1875)
- Kettinggangers in Atjeh
- Stelling-Pel
Source
Onze vestiging in Atjeh, critisch beschreven, by G. F. W. Borel, Kapitein der Artillerie. ‘s-Gravenhage: D. A. Thieme, 1878. pp. 39, 46, 59, 65, 95, 112, 119, 176, 193, 243, 247, 254–256.