Pante Perak (also written Pantej Perak; modern Pantai Perak, “silver beach”) is the grass plain to the north of Koeta Radja on which both the principal hospital of the Dutch garrison and a temporary troop camp were established in the early years of the Atjeh-oorlog. The hospital at Pante Perak was the place of work of Dominee Thenu, the soldiers’ minister who comforted and lifted up the wounded, the sick, and the sorrowful. The troop camp, built in 1875 by the Staf der Genie at Kota Radja under the direction of Tweede-Luitenant C. J. Snijders, relieved the pressure of quarters in the Kraton itself and in May 1875 received the Compagnie Mineurs en Sappeurs, “hetgeen in vergelijking met het tot dusver in gebruik zijnde logies in den Kraton een grooten vooruitgang beteekende.”
The Hospital and Dominee Thenu
One saw the silent, modest figure of this proclaimer of God’s Word also in the hospital of Pante Perak. The hospital of Pante Perak is the book’s marker of Thenu’s work as a soul-shepherd: the soldiers’ minister who was seen in the hospital, where he comforted and lifted up the wounded, the sick, and the sorrowful. The hospital at Pante Perak thus served, in the early phase of the Atjeh-oorlog, both as the principal medical institution of the Dutch garrison at Koeta Radja and as the pastoral field of the soldiers’ minister.
The Troop Camp of 1875
After the close of his field engineer service with the Lamara Olejlo fortification of 15 February 1875, Snijders was attached to the Staf der Genie at Kota Radja. Among the peacetime works listed by the biographer Van den Berg is “het bouwen van een tijdelijk troepenkampement in de grasvlakte van Pantej Perak (ten N. van Kota Radja).” The camp was built to relieve the pressure of quarters in the Kraton itself, which had served as the principal Dutch billet since the capture of the Kraton of 24 January 24 January 1874. In May 1875 Snijders’ own Compagnie Mineurs en Sappeurs moved into the new camp, a marked improvement on the previous Kraton quarters.
Significance
Pante Perak is significant in Oost-Indisch Journael as the place of the hospital in which Thenu was seen; it is significant in the 1944 biography of Snijders as the site of the temporary troop camp that, in May 1875, relieved the pressure of quarters in the Kraton and gave the Compagnie Mineurs en Sappeurs a proper base of operations. The construction of the camp is one of the small but cumulative improvements by which the Dutch position at Koeta Radja was transformed, in the course of 1874–1875, from a besieged foothold in the captured Kraton into a permanent garrison with proper troop accommodation, an ice factory for the Medical Service, a cattle-pen for 400 head outside the town, a narrow-gauge railway to Olehleh, and a drained and embanked perimeter. Pante Perak — the “silver beach” — also gives its name to the principal beach of modern Banda Aceh.
Account from Vierhonderd jaren missie (1934) — the great military hospital and Pastoor Verbraak
Panteh Perak (also spelled Pante Perak) was the site of the great military hospital (groot militair hospitaal) of the colonial campement at Kotta-Radja — the principal medical institution of the Netherlands-Indian Army in Atjeh throughout the Atjeh-oorlog — and the place where Pastoor H. C. Verbraak exercised the most renowned phase of his chaplaincy, attending the wounded and dying brought in from the lines after every action, and — during the early-phase cholera epidemic of the campement — staying voluntarily in the infected ward when the medical staff themselves could scarcely be induced to enter. The hospital is documented in the mission jubilee volume through the testimony of the medical officer Dr. N. Munk, who recorded the chaplain’s presence in the cholera-ward as the sole voluntary visitor of the dying.
The military hospital of Kotta-Radja
The campement at Kotta-Radja — the colonial military settlement that grew up around the captured Kraton after 24 January 1874 — required a substantial military hospital for the reception of the wounded and sick of the Atjeh-oorlog. The hospital at Panteh Perak was this institution: the groote militaire hospitaal of the colonial army in Atjeh, the destination of the wounded brought in “in hun bebloede draagbaren” (“in their bloodied stretchers”) after every action in the lines, and the principal site of the military medical care of the Atjeh campaign.
Verbraak’s chaplaincy at Panteh Perak
The mission jubilee volume — reproducing Kalff’s sketch of Pastoor Verbraak — records that the chaplain was “nergens zoo in zijn element als in het groote militaire hospitaal op Panteh Perak” (“nowhere so in his element as in the great military hospital at Panteh Perak”). The testimony of an officer of the Netherlands-Indian Army, preserved by Kalff, fixes the hospital as the principal theatre of Verbraak’s chaplaincy:
“Nergens was Pastoor Verbraak zóó in zijn element als in het groote militaire hospitaal op Panteh Perak. Nergens had hij trouwens zulk een overvloedige gelegenheid den aandrang van zijn ruim menschlievend hart te volgen. Werden er na de een of andere actie in de linies gekwetsten in hun bebloede draagbaren binnengebracht, dan was de pastoor er haast even spoedig bij als de doktoren. Voor iederen zieke of gewonde had hij een vriendelijk bemoedigend woord, dat hem opheurte.”
The testimony fixes the routine of Verbraak’s chaplaincy: he was present at the hospital whenever wounded were brought in from the lines, with a friendly word for every sick or wounded soldier, and — for the dying — a sustained bedside ministry that included the placement of orphaned children with families or in orphanages and the fulfilment of the dying soldiers’ last requests. The hospital was thus the principal documented site of the Catholic chaplaincy of the Atjeh-oorlog — a function it shared with Dominee Thenu of the Protestant chaplaincy, who is recorded in Oost-Indisch Journael as having been seen at the same hospital comforting and lifting up the wounded, the sick, and the sorrowful.
The cholera-ward and the testimony of Dr. N. Munk
The most consequential single episode of Verbraak’s Panteh Perak chaplaincy was his voluntary presence in the cholera-ward during the early-phase epidemic. The cholera broke out “in het kampement te Kotta-Radja” (“in the campement at Kotta-Radja”) in the early phase of the Atjeh-oorlog; the death-rate among the soldiers was so great that the hospital staff could scarcely be induced to enter the sick-ward. Verbraak — compared by the medical officer Dr. N. Munk to Pater Damiaan on Molokaï — stayed the entire period in the infected ward.
The testimony of Dr. N. Munk, preserved in Kalff’s sketch, is the principal documentary witness to this episode:
“Die dagen staan mij nog helder voor den geest. Maar midden in het visioen van die klagende zieken, sommigen stil, nu en dan kreunend, anderen schreeuwend van pijn, met angstige, blauw-witte gezichten, verrijst in een schitterend licht het beeld van Pastoor Verbraak. Over de soutane heen de door herhaalde ontsmetting gevlekte en smoezelijke zieken-kabaja, daar beneden de vaalblauwe geruite ziekensarong, een aandoenlijk groteske verschijning, waarboven het bleeke magere priestergelaat ernstige hartelijke deelneming uitstraalt over de arme menschen, die daar in alle stadiën der vreeselijke ziekte neerliggen, maar uit de aanwezigheid van hem, die zich geheel vrijwillig in ‘t gevaar begeeft, kracht putten om zonder verwenschingen de krampen te verdragen … En pastoor Verbraak was de eenige, die vrijwillig de vreeselijke cholera-zaal bezocht.”
The testimony fixes Verbraak’s presence at Panteh Perak as the sole voluntary visitor of the cholera-ward — a documentary fact that made him, in the colonial medical-missionary imagination, the Atjeh analogue of Father Damien of Molokaï.
Significance of the Panteh Perak account
Panteh Perak’s significance for the encyclopedia of Achehnese history, in the Catholic mission record, lies principally in the documentary fact that it was the principal military hospital of the colonial army in Atjeh and the principal documented site of the Catholic chaplaincy of the Atjeh-oorlog. The wounded of every action in the lines passed through Panteh Perak; the chaplain Pastoor Verbraak exercised there the most renowned phase of his thirty-year ministry; and the cholera-ward of the early-phase epidemic — fixed in the documentary record by the testimony of Dr. N. Munk — was the site of the chaplain’s voluntary presence when the medical staff themselves could scarcely be induced to enter. The hospital is thus the principal documented site of the medical and religious care of the colonial soldier in the Atjeh war-footing.
See Also
Sources
Oost-Indisch Journael: Palaver om de tafel met het gat, by Merac, Toekan-Serie no. 2, ed. G. L. Tichelman (Haarlem: De Gulden Pers, 1947), the chapter on den zieleherder.
D. van den Berg, Cornelis Jacobus Snijders (1852–1939): Een leven in dienst van zijn Land en zijn Volk (Voorburg: September 1944), p. 33. Koninklijke Bibliotheek shelfmark 0301 4872.
Vierhonderd jaren missie in Nederlandsch-Indië, 1593–1934 (Batavia: Algemeen Comité van Voorbereiding tot de Feestelijke Herdenking van 400 jaar Missie in Ned.-Indië, [1934]), pp. 130–132, after S. Kalff, “Een trits Indische Pastoors,” in Koloniaal Missie Tijdschrift, Jaargang XII. Onze vestiging in Atjeh, critisch beschreven, by G. F. W. Borel, Kapitein der Artillerie. ‘s-Gravenhage: D. A. Thieme, 1878. pp. 254–256, 263. De verovering van Atjeh’s groote Missigit by J.F.D. Bruinsma, Sneek, 1889. Atjeh gedurende de tweede expeditie en later, Een Oud Officier, Batavia: Ogilvie & Co., 1876, pp. 68-72.