Peutjoet

Peutjoet — also Peutjot, Peucut — is the military cemetery of Koeta-Radja in Aceh, at which Dominee Thenu is buried “temidden van zovelen, die hij voorbereid had op die laatste gang daarheen” — among the many whom he had prepared for that last journey there. In Oost-Indisch Journael by Merac (1947), Peutjoet is called the “Eik en Duinen” of Aceh — Eik en Duinen being the famous cemetery in The Hague — the place where a brave man was carried to his last resting-place, and where Dominee Thenu was regularly present. The cemetery was primarily intended for Dutch soldiers and officers who fell during the various expeditions in Atjeh; the names of the dead are recorded in the stone walls at the entrance to the cemetery.

The Kerkhof Petjoet was the military cemetery at Koeta Radja in Groot-Atjeh, the burial place of the Dutch and native soldiers who fell in the Atjeh-oorlog, and a recurring presence in P. H. R. Beuming’s Schetsen uit den strijd op Groot-Atjeh, which reproduces a photograph of its main gate.

The “Eik en Duinen” of Aceh

How often was he not present, in those many years, when a brave man was carried to his last resting-place at Peutjoet, the “Eik en Duinen” of Aceh. The comparison — the Acehnese cemetery that was, for the colonial soldiers of Aceh, what Eik en Duinen was for the Dutch of The Hague — is the colonial memory’s marker of Peutjoet as the last resting-place of the colonial soldiers and the place where the soldiers’ minister was regularly present.

The cemetery

Peutjoet was the military cemetery of Koeta-Radja, the burial place of the K.N.I.L. soldaten who had died in the Aceh War and in the late-colonial peace that followed. Dominee Thenu — who had served the colonial army for forty years — was buried there “temidden van zovelen, die hij voorbereid had op die laatste gang daarheen” — the dominee had prepared the soldaten for their deaths, and was now buried among them.

The funeral of Dominee Thenu (11 May 1937)

The funeral of Dominee Thenu at Koeta-Radja on 11 May 1937 concluded with his burial at Peutjoet. The funeral — with four retired M.W.O.-ridders (Salawono (3e kl.), Pattiasina, Kazen and Pattipuluhu) as slippendragers and a Marechaussee brigade as vuurpeleton — was the most resonant image of the moral economy of the Marechaussee. The burial at Peutjoet — among the many whom Thenu had prepared for death — is the quiet closure of the Thenu narrative.

The gravestone

His gravestone at Peutjoet carries the verse from Job 4:3 — “Zie, gij hebt velen onderwezen, En gij hebt slappe handen gesterkt” (“Behold, you have instructed many, and you have strengthened feeble hands”). The verse, drawn from the speech of Eliphaz the Temanite to Job, is the scriptural closure of the dominee’s life: Thenu had instructed many, and had strengthened feeble hands.

Account from Nederlandsch Indië Platen Atlas (1926) — Peutjot Cemetery

The atlas describes the cemetery in the caption accompanying the plate depicting it: “Ingang tot het kerkhof te Peutjot bij Kotaradja, Atjeh. Dit kerkhof werd voornamelijk bestemd voor de op de verschillende expedities in Atjeh gesneuvelden. Hun namen vindt men in de steenen wanden der toegangspoort gebeiteld.” (Entrance to the cemetery at Peutjot near Kotaradja, Atjeh. This cemetery was primarily intended for those who fell on the various expeditions in Atjeh. Their names are found carved in the stone walls of the entrance gate.)

Historical Context

The “various expeditions” referenced in the atlas description span the entire period of the Aceh War from the first Dutch attack in 1873 through the protracted guerrilla phase and the eventual pacification under Governor Van Heutsz. The cemetery thus holds the remains of casualties from multiple generations of the conflict, reflecting both the large-scale conventional campaigns of the 1870s and the extended counter-insurgency operations of the 1890s and early 1900s. Its inclusion in the atlas, alongside the Atjeh Monument in Weltevreden, indicates that by 1926 the Atjeh War had taken its place in the official colonial memory as a chapter of sacrifice and ultimate triumph.

Significance

Peutjoet is significant in Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L. as the military cemetery of Koeta-Radja and the burial place of Dominee Thenu, the moral closure of the Thenu narrative — the dominee who had prepared the soldaten for their deaths was now buried among them. In Oost-Indisch Journael it is the “Eik en Duinen” of Aceh, where Thenu’s regular presence at the carrying-out of the brave marks his work as a soul-shepherd. Peutjoet is therefore the marker of the moral economy of the Marechaussee: the men of courage carrying the man of faith, and burying him among the men he had blessed.

In the Nederlandsch Indië Platen Atlas (1926), Peutjoet stands alongside the Atjeh Monument in Weltevreden as the two principal physical memorials to the Aceh War: one on the battlefield itself, the other in the imperial capital. Together they enshrine the Atjeh conflict in the official colonial memory of the late Dutch East Indies.

Account from Atjeh by H.C. Zentgraff (1938)

Zentgraff gives Peutjoet its most evocative description in the Atjeh-oorlog corpus. Waar witte grafsteenen blikkeren in de schaduw der boomen — where white grave-stones gleam in the shade of the trees — the dead of the war lie: Scheepens, Webb, Campioni, Darlang and many others whose zuilen (columns) bear names and portraits. Na de soos-fuiven of Saturday nights, the officers and their wives would walk among the rows on Sunday mornings.

Scheepens, Zentgraff records, used to say to his wife as their carriage rolled past Peutjoet: “Wat een geluk, later hier te liggen tusschen de ouwe krijgsmakkers.” The wish was granted: he was stabbed at Sigli on 10 October 1913 and buried at Peutjoet three days later. Heel Atjeh was er bij toen Scheepens zijn laatsten rit maakte naar Peutjoet. His wife bent over the dead and said: “Je was nooit bang geweest voor den dood; je noemde hem: de groote rust. Het was altijd je verlangen op Peutjoet te liggen bij je oude kameraden, Webb, Campioni.”

Van Heutsz once said, looking at the white stones: that he had an idea he would lie here someday. The body of luitenant De Bruijn — gedood in den overval bij den loeëng bij Meulaboh op den dag dat hij had moeten trouwen — was brought by the kapal poetih to Oeleë Lheuë and so to Peutjoet; zijne bruidsjapon was al in Java besteld. Bodies of common soldiers were buried at Indrapoeri; the bodies of officers came to Peutjoet. The sul (grave) of Darlang on Peutjoet is, Zentgraff notes, een der meest treffende.

Atjeh, door H.C. Zentgraff. Gedrukt bij Drukkerij “De Unie”, 1938, Batavia.

The burial of Lieutenant Westendorp

Beuming’s fullest description arises from the funeral of Lieutenant K. H. Westendorp, who died on 10 March 1896 of the wound received in the patrol of 7 March 1896 and was buried on 11 March met de meeste plechtigheid en onder groote belangstelling — with the greatest solemnity and before a large attendance. Many flowers and wreaths covered the coffin as a last tribute to the promising officer who zoo vroeg op het veld van eer z’n leven liet voor Koningin en Vaderland.

Of the cemetery itself Beuming wrote: Hoe menigmaal is het rustige Petjoet al niet getuige geweest van zulk een aangrijpende gebeurtenis. De ontelbare grafzerken zeggen het U; overal leest Ge: “Aan onze dierbare kameraden; aan onzen vriend en krijgsmakker, gevallen op het veld van eer te Lambaroe, Kroeng Raba, Kajoe Leh, Aroen” enz. enz. — how many times has quiet Petjoet not been witness of such a moving event; the countless gravestones tell you so, and everywhere you read “to our dear comrades; to our friend and comrade in arms, fallen on the field of honour at Lambaroe, Kroeng Raba, Kajoe Leh, Aroen,” and so forth.

He records that at the moment when the rifles were presented about the open grave as a last honour, heb ik in menig krijgsmansoog tranen zien blinken — he had seen tears glisten in many a soldier’s eye, and that those who had faced death beside the fallen man could mostly not master their feelings and stood weeping like children. O Moederland! Waart Ge daar eens getuige van, wat zoudt Ge meer sympathie gevoelen voor den koloniaal — O mother country, were you once witness of that, how much more sympathy would you feel for the colonial soldier.

At every burial, he adds — onverschillig tot welk geloof de overledene ook behoorde — irrespective of the faith to which the deceased belonged — Pastoor Verbraak was present.

Other burials recorded

The dead of the patrol to the Goeah Teroes of 25 September 1897 — Lieutenant J. van Greuningen and the fusiliers Winkelman, Tuk, Dissel and Siman — were carried the same day from Lho-Nga to Koeta Radja to be buried at Petjoet, de rustplaats van zoovele dappere wapenbroeders.

Beuming writes of Pastoor Verbraak that many sons of the Netherlands who then rested at Petjoet onder de schaduw der kokospalmen — under the shade of the coconut palms — had been attended by him in their death struggle.

Account in du Croo’s Generaal Swart (1943)

At the burial H. N. A. Swart delivered the funeral oration, “and then, perhaps for the first time in all those hard Atjeh years, Swart lost mastery of his nerves… the address had to be broken off.” I. Feenstra wrote in 1918 of “the memorial gate of the fallen” and of “the marble shields on the gate of Peutjoet [which] are history and do not lie!” General Köhler, the first Dutch general to fall in Atjeh, was killed in 1873 at Koeta Radja by the missigit, “a few hundred metres from his grave.”

Account from the Maréchaussée Jubileum-nummer (1930) — the Kerkhof te Peutjoet

the 1930 jubilee number of Het Nieuws van den Dag voor Nederlandsch-Indië describes the Kerkhof te Peutjoet — the military cemetery at Peutjoet near Koeta Radja — as the resting place of many of the dead of the Korps Maréchaussée, and as the site before which the corps’s colour was to be presented on 2 April 1930.

“Over geheel Atjeh liggen de graven dier dapperen verspreid” — over the whole of Atjeh the graves of those brave men lie scattered — but many rested at Peutjoet, “wier namen in den muur zijn gebeiteld als een stille, doch sprekende hulde aan hun nagedachtenis,” their names chiselled into the wall as a silent but eloquent tribute.

The editors wrote of it in elevated terms: “de doodenakker van Peutjoet is een epos, waarvan de grootsche handeling is de vestiging en bevestiging van het Nederlandsch Gezag, een stuk gewijde grond, hetwelk niet dan met ontroering kan worden betreden. Daar ligt de geschiedenis van den Atjeh-oorlog beschreven, de historie eener lange worsteling, waarin de Maréchaussée de meest-eervolle plaats heeft ingenomen.”

The busts

Busts of four officers of the corps adorned the cemetery “als zoovele symbolen van moed, beleid en trouw” — the words engraved on the knight’s cross of the Militaire Willems-Orde: Scheepens, Darlang, Vis and Webb.

In the period 1890–1930 approximately 950 members of the corps fell on the field of battle and about 250 were wounded; most of the deaths occurred during the patrouilles.

Source

Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L., by G. W. T. Dames, Maj. Inf. K.N.I.L. b.d. (‘s-Gravenhage: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 1954), chapter “Dominee Thenu.”

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.

Nederlandsch Indië Platen Atlas met korte beschrijvingen, uitgegeven door Volkslectuur, Weltevreden, Java. Weltevreden: G. Kolff & Co., January 1926. Plate 70.

Schetsen uit den strijd op Groot-Atjeh, met speciaal vervaardigde kaart en toepasselijke photo’s, bewerkt door P. H. R. Beuming, oud-onderofficier van het Ned.-Indische Leger (Amsterdam, December 1911; uitgegeven ten bate van het te stichten Herstellingsoord voor Rijks-Ambtenaren). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Br N 82-144

Acknowledgement of sources. The material in this article derives from Schetsen uit den strijd op Groot-Atjeh, met speciaal vervaardigde kaart en toepasselijke photo’s, bewerkt door P. H. R. Beuming, oud-onderofficier van het Ned.-Indische Leger (Amsterdam, December 1911). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.

Generaal Swart, Pacificator van Atjeh (“General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh”), by M. H. du Croo, Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with the collaboration of H. J. Schmidt, Titular Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with a foreword by His Excellency Lieutenant-General K.N.I.L. (retired) G. K. Dijkstra (Maastricht: N.V. Leiter-Nypels, 1943), Chapter XII, XVI.

Het Korps Maréchaussée in Atjeh: De Atjehsche Garde, 1890 - 2 April 1930 (“The Corps of Maréchaussée in Atjeh: The Atjehnese Guard”), Extra Jubileum-nummer of Het Nieuws van den Dag voor Nederlandsch-Indië issued for the fortieth anniversary of the corps (1930), pp. 1-16. Offprint DLP-143, Bibliotheek KITLV, accession 621 116 794.

tags	place, cemetery, memorial, military, colonial, aceh, koeta-radja, knil, dutch, war-graves, achehnese-history, aceh-war, marechaussee
aliases	Peutjot, Peucut, Peutjot cemetery, the Eik en Duinen of Aceh, Aceh cemetery, Kuta Alam cemetery, heroes cemetery, kerkhof te Peutjot, kerkhof bij Kotaradja, Kerkhof Petjoet, Petjoet cemetery, the cemetery of Petjoet at Koeta Radja, Petjoet, Kerkhof Peutjoet, Kerkhof te Peutjoet, doodenakker van Peutjoet

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