Military Footwear

tallwingedgoat

tallwingedgoat

Joined
Jan 13, 1999
Messages
1,422
Why do soldiers were boots?

I can see why you would wear them in the snow. But other than that, they don't seem to be better than lighter hiking shoes in the other environments.
 
Hail Spartans.

The reason for high boots is so that pants can be bloused to keep insects and the elements out. Also, taller boots provide better ankle support for humps (jungle boots notwhithstanding).
 
Why boots? Tradition of course. Foot protection, ankle protection. Lightweight hikers are ok for a romp in the woods, but, the added strain of jumping out of a plane or humping a ruck (overloaded with lightweight, high tech gear) demands protection for your dogs. If the fighting goes to HTH than it's alot better to kick your adversary in the face with a boot than some tevas. And most important, y'don't look as cool in BDUs when you are wearing pennyloafers.

Dan

------------------
Shamelessly promoting his wife's buisness :)

http://www.gogetemgear.com/
 
I figured it might just be tradition. Native jungle people don't wear boots, hikers don't wear boots, neither do coolies used to heavy weights. I'm not sure about sports parachutists, but I think they wear light footwear.

Recently I saw some pictures of Vietnamese soldiers, and they were wearing some sort of canvas sneakers or something in the jungle.

I just thought boots are heavy and require too much spit and polish.
 
Whoa, I meant tradition as a sarcastic (at least partially) answer. The boot is a all around, general purpose form of footwear. The folks that cook our chow and type our records usually, but not always, wear footgear other than boots. Thai troops I've trained in the jungle did wear sneakers and sandels, but traveled a lot lighter than we did. When they did gear up, they slapped some boots on (if they had 'em). OK, picture this. Jumping out a plane with 150lbs of gear and chute strapped to your butt. Land, form up, force march through the woods for 15 miles. start to climb a moutain. When you get to the top, assault a complex of 10 or 15 buildings. Proceed to clear the area, blowing doors and having firefights, while sprinting and jumping over obstacles and through rubble. Then form up, and call the birds in to extract you. Remember if they don't come, it's a long walk out through God knows what types of terrain encountering who knows what along the way. Now try doing all that in Birkenstocks.

That's as clear as I can make it, next man...Go!

Dan

------------------
Shamelessly promoting his wife's buisness :)

http://www.gogetemgear.com/
 
One additional clarification...sport parachutist can "flare" right before touching down (they also get to freefall/pull there own ripcord), but the majority of our jumps are static line mass tacs--no cute flaring at the end, just an ochestrated crash landing--try that in your tevas. And my apologies to those military groups that do get to freefall (HAHO/HALO etc), pull their own ripcord and flare--I picked the masses to use for my example (which didn't include the infil/assault/exfil that was already covered above)
smile.gif


h-man
 
I always thought it was to keep boot knives in
wink.gif


------------------
"Dream as if you'll live forever, Live as if you'll die today"
-- James Dean

-Jesse Foust
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top