Wartime

These shoes were worn by a man called Captain Lee of the Welsh Regiment in the First Battle for Gaza in March 1917. There has always been conflict in this area and this continues today. In the First World War there was fighting in many countries and many terrains. This young man from Wales who probably had never been abroad in his life would have found the prospect of an massive desert to fight in slightly daunting. These mesh shoes would have been attached to his boots for more grip in the sand.

Also in the First World War, the image of trenches often appears in the mind. The British Army gave these ‘waders’ to their men if they had to work in deep water and mud. In the Winter most trenches would be absolutely full of water and mud and these boots would have been a luxury and a welcome sight to many cold and wet soldiers.

Feet and footwear is incredibly important to soldiers. They can’t fight properly, defend others or themselves if they have problems with their feet. Very often men were struck down by ‘Trench Foot’ brought on by simple wet conditions but something which made a lot of men extremely ill and unable to fight. This is something which could be overlooked by modern people who didn’t live through the war but to the men marching and wading through mud, the feeling of having clean, dry feet was probably one of the things they wished for most on a daily basis. The government even encouraged men to dry their feet whenever they could. On the left, an evacuated Soldier in World War Two does just this and changes his socks and boots in Dover in 1940.

A soldier's dog looks after his master's vital boots while he takes a shower in 1942.

Across time there have been and still are many wars between different combinations of nations and groups big and small. In the case of the first and second world wars, they were so widespread and global that it was rare to find someone in the world who wasn’t affected personally or knew someone that had been involved. Men, women and children of any age or nationality are affected by war. Shoes were a large part of wartime identity, whether they were polished army boots or left behind at the gates of Auschwitz, they give us a jig-sawed story of their owner’s experiences to piece together…

These large straw boots were used by the German Army in World War Two on the Eastern front. They were worn over the top of boots to keep warm because when the Germans were fighting the Russians, they had to cope with sub-zero temperatures. The German soldiers were not properly prepared for the freezing cold temperatures they were fighting in. When they invaded in the summer of 1941 it soon became a secondary problem for the soldiers to stay alive not just because of warfare but because of the weather and complications it brought. As a result, lots of men died just from the climate. These boots would have been shared by the men and swapped over by whoever was standing watch and keeping guard, standing still for long amounts of time. They also used newspapers, rags and straw to stuff their boots for warmth as the basic boots they were given were mostly made of metal. Metal boots obviously conduct the cold so didn’t help matters. To help with the weather conditions, the German home front sent furs to their soldiers and started to produce boots made of leather, wood and felt. On the other side, the Russians produced leather shoes for their generals which were slip on so that they didnt have to tie laces in the bitter cold...

Wartime shoes were made of many different materials depending on what they were needed for… these are fake rubber feet from World War Two which were made to trick Japanese soldiers into thinking that only local villagers had been passing when really it was British secret agents sneaking up in enemy territory. They could be strapped to female or male shoes and used when landing on a beach from the sea so that no tracks could be seen apart from footsteps. In other countries in WW2, people wanting to stay hidden would wear clog shoes with the soles fitted backwards to send the enemy tracking in the wrong direction…

“Make do and Mend” was a big campaign. Everyone was told to mend and be creative so that things would last longer and spare material could be used for parachutes and uniforms for the soldiers. This encouraged people to take care of their existing clothes and footwear. Rubber was extremely rare in the 1940s as there was a lot of rubber shortages due to it being needed in weapons manufacture. Shoes made of fabric weren’t rationed which meant they became quite fashionable. These brown heels from the 1940s are made of suede and felt. They have a ‘CC41 civilian clothing mark stamped on them which means they were rationed. They have low heels because Heels higher than 2 inches were thought of as unnecessary and were forbidden. Women switched to using fabric purses and belts instead of leather and rubber too. Every man woman and child was given clothes coupons as well as a food rations book.

There were many different boots designed for the Second World War forces. This was a sheepskin lined air force boot from 1940 which was called an Escape Boot. It was called the escape boot because if the wearer wanted to, he could use a small knife concealed in the shoe to remove the tops of the boots and wear the shoe underneath which was designed to look like ordinary civilian wear.

There was less rationing in America. This is a photo of British children, in particular a girl called Patricia who received new shoes from a kind woman in America called Mrs Abernathy of Seattle in 1941. Patricia is licking her pencil and preparing to write a thank you letter. New shoes would have been extremely exciting and Patricia would have probably been wearing damaged shoes or no shoes at all before the gift. Many children were so young that they didn’t know any different from the wartime shortages and unsettled living arrangements during WW2. Evacuation plans had previously been in place to send millions of children on liners across to America but this was difficult and plans were abandoned due to enemy ships in the water. The ‘Athenia’ was one of the first ships to take evacuees over to America in 1939 but it was sunk by a German submarine and 118 passengers sadly died.

It wasn’t just British children that were evacuated during World War Two though. These are shoes with clip on ice-skates which belonged to a little boy called Herbert who was evacuated from Czechoslovakia to the Scottish Highlands in June 1939. He took with him two small suitcases, a pair of boots and these skates. The skates were polished by his mother shortly before he boarded the evacuation ‘Kindertransport’. Sadly Herbert’s parents were killed by the Nazi’s and because Herbert had been in Scotland so long, by the end of the war he had forgotten how to speak his native language and couldn’t communicate with any old friends back in Czechoslovakia. However, Herbert stayed with his kind foster family in Scotland and he went on to go to Glasgow University to study medicine. When you ice-skate you feel completely free. There were different types of liberation involved with evacuation…

This shoe belonged to a First World War German Spy called Georg Breeckow who was in the UK under a fake name, ‘Reginald Rowland’. He was arrested and sentenced to death at the Tower of London by the British intelligence in 1915. His black leather boots were taken apart and examined for invisible ink messages and codes.

Food was rationed in World War Two all over the world because shipments couldn’t sail from country to country without being sunk by enemy ships and submarines. This meant there were constant shortages. As Britain is an island, food was very scarce as deliveries to local shops were dependant on whether or not the ships could safely get into ports. When ships were sunk there were double the shortages so ‘rationing’ had to be in place so that everyone got a fair share of whatever made it to the shops. It wasn’t just food that was rationed though, clothes and shoes were rationed too...

Nurses in the war also had special shoes. This is from 1939. Nurses who had graduated would have worn these and they would have been expected to keep their white shoes clean despite working in chaotic wartime hospital conditions. They are white because like the military, they had to be seen to be professional under pressure and able to perform their duty efficiently and with a clean uniform.

The mending in Make do and Mend was soon in force as soldiers needed boots fit to fight in, not have boots that were falling apart. Old boots wouldn’t be thrown away - they would be sent back to England and mended. In a factory in Somerset people worked day and night to mend thousands of pairs of boots to send back to the fronts. Here they are ready to be sent back. The people mending them all day must have imagined what had happened to each boot’s previous owner.

The Shoe Collection, Northampton Museums and Art Gallery

This was a ladies shoe from the Second World War home front. She worked in a munitions factory. They had to wear shoes with absolutely no metal material in them for safety reasons. (This shoe had a wooden sole).

These are boots issued by the British Army for snow conditions. The colour would have been to camouflage them. It is often forgotten that wars were fought in many different countries at the same time in a war. In the Second World War there were freezing temperatures and snowy terrain to deal with as well as the dark and damp trenches of France. Boots were also designed in green and yellow canvas for tropical conditions.

This massive over-boot from 1940 was worn on military aircraft in the Second World War. It would have been extremely heavy and is something the modern soldiers of today wouldn’t enjoy wearing at all. Lighter aviator boots did develop however as you can see below...

Did you know? The Phrase ‘Fill your boots’ comes from the time when thirsty sailors took off their shoes and boots and filled them with wine straight from cargo barrels on the ship to drink from. They were literally, ‘filling their boots’ to use as a cup. The earliest record of this comes from diaries from the 1800s. Can you imagine how much of a problem this would have been if their boots were as big as aviator boots?!

This is a poem by famous writer and poet Rudyard Kipling called 'Boots'. He wrote many wartime poems and wrote this one, ‘boots’ in 1903. He also was the inspiration for the emotional sentence on millions of graves across the world with unknown soldiers in them that read ‘Known unto God’. It is sad to think that he was fascinated by marching infantry men and wrote this rhythmic poem just 12 years before his own son was killed in the first stages of The First World War…

WE' RE foot—slog—slog—slog—sloggin' over Africa
Foot—foot—foot—foot—sloggin' over Africa
(Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up and down again!)
There's no discharge in the war !

Seven—six—eleven—five—nine—an'—twenty mile to—day—
Four—eleven—seventeen—thirty—two the day before
(Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up and down again !)
There's no discharge in the war !

Don't—don't—don't—don't—look at what's in front of you.
(Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up an' down again);
Men—men—men—men—men go mad with watchin' 'em,
An' there's no discharge in the war !

Count—count—count—count—the bullets in the bandoliers.
If—your—eyes—drop—they will get atop o' you !
(Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up and down again)
There's no discharge in the war !

Try—try—try—try—to think o' something different—
Oh—my—God—keep—me from goin' lunatic !
(Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up an' down again !)
There's no discharge in the war !

We—can—stick—out—'unger, thirst, an' weariness,
But—not—not—not—not the chronic sight of 'em—
Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up an' down again,
An' there's no discharge in the war !

'Tain`t—so—bad—by—day because o' company,
But night—brings—long—strings—o' forty thousand million
Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up an' down again
There's no discharge in the war !

I—'ave—marched—six—weeks in 'Ell an' certify
It—is—not—fire—devils, dark, or anything,
But boots—boots—boots—boots—movin'up an' down again,
An' there's no discharge in the war !

There are sadly many soldier's boots that were only needed for a short space of time ...

Imperial War Museum London First World War Galleries

Boots

This shoe was thrown after troops leaving for the front from a London railway station. It was thrown by a girl whose two brothers were leaving on the train. It reads ‘GOOD LUCK FROM JACK, CHARLEY, JERRY & JIM SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE’ and is painted onto a red leather child’s shoe alongside the brother’s regiment, Middlesex. 'Somewhere in France' shows us the amount of information wartime families sadly had...

Shoes were often thrown after people for luck and I can imagine the emotion that would have been in the air that day and many days on station platforms...

More military footwear, including the nurse, amunitions factory, snow boot and large air force over boot can be visited at: