Die Italiaanse Korps
The Italian volunteers for the Boer cause. By Alberto Rosselli (Translated by L. Pavese) December 25, 1899, Austral Africa. In a clearing near the city of Dundee, in Southern Transvaal, a tall and bearded officer of the Boer army wearing a worn broad-brimmed hat and carrying a Mauser rifle is reviewing a curious-looking unit, consisting of three hundred soldiers, dressed and armed in the most varied and colorful ways. The officer is haranguing the soldiers, inciting them to fight the British oppressor who is bent on wiping out the Boer state’s freedom dream. At first sight, the scene would not be an incongruous one because, a few weeks before, the Boer president Paul Kruger had begun the mobilization of the Afrikaners against Her Majesty’s army. This unit, however, had been formed by Italians residing in the Transvaal who were determined to give their contribution (together with German, Austrian, Irish, French and American volunteers) to the cause