Kotta Loempoer was a Dutch coastal garrison town in northern Atjeh en Onderhorigheden where Dr. Wøller was stationed about 1905, described as “known and infamous as one of the hottest, by God and all men forsaken places between equator and tropics.”
Location and environment
It “lies on a sandy beach and bends toward the Strait of Malakke, in the back — on the land side — covered by a belt of lagoons and fishponds with stagnant water and mangrove swamps, inexhaustible breeding places for the army of mosquitoes and everything that flows from it.”
Seen from the sea it “made a tiny, poor and insignificant impression, — which it indeed had in common with most coastal places of the tropics. The sun, the vegetation and the sea are too overpowering, — the dwellings of men cannot assert themselves there.” Wøller saw “only a few dozen low houses with verandas and roofs of corrugated iron in rows on the beach and behind these the confused, disorderly swarm of the brown, with atap covered huts of the natives.”
He never forgot his mood “on that glowing, suffocating forenoon, when he from the anchored steamboat for the first time looked into the little town.” The white houses lay “so strangely, so shamelessly naked in their poverty under this sun, that rode so high in the sky, that even the shadows had disappeared, on the yellow sand.” “From below, from front and from behind flashed the reflexes of the flowing steel of the sea and of the boiling oil of the lagoons.”
“Everything lay enveloped in that unbearable light, that flickered and sparkled and danced through the always humid air, so that the eyes never found rest; one could look neither at the heaven nor at the sea, and with difficulty at the green mountains, that far inland formed the horizon.”
No coconut palms or waringin shaded the square: “Only a few dark, pine-like casuarina trees along the beach accentuated the sadness further.”
Garrison life
“Kotta Loempoer itself, with its garrison of 12—1400 men élite troops was not entirely secured against sudden raids and nightly shootings.”
Shortly after Wøller’s arrival a feast was held for Overste van Rieten, “civil and military commander of the whole province Getâh”, who after many years uninterrupted service in Atjeh had received one year’s leave. Guests gathered “around the enormous, large, round table on the candle-lit, cement estrade along the beach before the small clubhouse.” “Only the barbed-wire entanglement separated them from the sea, and the steady roar of the surf almost drowned the many-voiced song of the tropical night.”
The officers’ corps numbered “a score of officers, some with their wives.” Wøller distinguished three categories of Aceh officers he met there: very young lieutenants, hardened captains, and the small group of Aceh specialists like Luitenant de Vries.
Connection to the war
Kotta Loempoer served as a base for the mobile columns described in the Aceh War, from which patrols departed into the interior where “elephants still trekked in large herds over the high plateaus, rhinoceros and tapirs over the swamps; tigers and panthers, pythons and cobras populated the forests.”
See Also
- Aceh War
- Johan Wøller
- Luitenant de Vries
- Luitenant ten Brink
- Overste van Rieten
- Atjeh en Onderhorigheden
Source
Als officier van gezondheid naar Nederlandsch-Indië, by Dr. Johan Wøller, trans. Greta Baars-Jelgersma (Utrecht: Erven J. Bijleveld), pp. 167-170.