AA 2000 Volume 32 Issue 2

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Willeboer en die Boere-Franse: mitifisering en ontnugtering in Villebois-Mareuil se Carnet de Campagne
(University of the Free State, 2000) Morgan, Naomi
English: The commemoration of the Anglo-Boer War provides researchers with an opportunity to publicise lesser known and forgotten texts. Worthy texts by foreign participants in the war are scarce; Villebois-Mareuil 's Carnet de Campagne is the work of a dedicated soldier, an author in his own right and the model for one of the bestknown figures on the French stage, Cyrano de Bergerac. This article focuses on Villebois's changing view of the Boers. The reader is provided with lengthy quotations from the war diary, for the most part accessible for the first time in Afrikaans. It becomes clear that Villebois's view of the Boers is coloured by personal considerations (his desire for military glory and his view of the Boers as distant descendants of the French). What Villebois and Bergerac have in common, and what becomes clear from his changing view of the Boers in this diary, is their personal striving for excellence and their gradual disillusionment with the human material by means of which military glory was to be achieved on the battle-field.