Lepong-Bajoe — written also Lepong Bayoe and Lepong-Baijoe — was an Achehnese kampong lying behind and beside the kampong Lam-Lepong, on the sawah before Selimoen in the valley of the Atjeh-rivier, spared by the Dutch on 14 August 1879 because no resistance was made from it, as recorded in W. Cool and G. B. Hooijer’s Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (1889).
The affair of 14 August and the bivak
When the enemy was seen to withdraw in the direction of Lepong-Bajoe after the storming of Lam-Lepong, the artillery of the Gerlach column came into battery against it and fired fourteen shells and mortar-throws, of which six — presumably wetted at the debarkation — did not burst. The troops then advanced over the partly still soft sawahs and the narrow galangans without further opposition. Since it was half past two in the afternoon, the troops had marched all day under a burning sun, and the guides reckoned the distance left to Selimoen at three hours, the plan of reaching Selimoen that day was given up; the bivak was laid in the conquered quarter of the kampong, on a fairly open and not too difficult ground at the opposite side. Water for drinking and cooking had to be fetched, apart from one well in the kampong, from a rivulet fifteen to twenty minutes distant in the depth. At seven in the evening the column’s rockets were answered from the direction of Lubeck’s force, very near, towards Selimoen.
Aftermath
On the return march of 18 August it was remarked that some inhabitants of Lepong-Baijoe had already returned to their houses; the populace came out of the kampongs peaceably everywhere, cattle already grazed again on the great sawah — a disposition which the authors expressly ascribed to the two-sided lesson: “het verbranden van Lam Lepong, waaruit wij hevig beschoten waren, en het sparen van Lepong-Baijoe, dat zich niet verzette” — the burning of Lam-Lepong, from which the column had been heavily fired upon, and the sparing of Lepong-Bajoe, which had not resisted.
See Also
Source
Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis, door W. Cool en G. B. Hooijer (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1889), pp. 49-51, 59-60. OCR-filename: 20260720_115822_DLP-135-Eene_schoone_bladzijde_uit_Atjeh_s_geschiedenis_Nemotron_OCR_v2_OCR.txt.