Jodhpurs / Breeches

It helps to have a 1914 mindset and probably a lot of practice. Curiously, before WWI, only one country that I'm aware of issued high-top lace-up boots for their soldiers and that was Denmark. They also had the equally curious habit of simply rolling up their pants legs and not "blousing" them.

U.S. soldiers of that era typically wore canvas leggings, also spelled without the g (which spell check won't permit). They seem to have been issued in quite a variety until finally replaced by combat boots around 1943 or 1944. Some had leather on the inside for mounted men.

EngProf said:

Since it's the 100th anniversary of WWI, there are a number of us doing WWI reenacting. That means that you need to wear puttees sometimes, and my verdict is that they were a mistake from the word "go". A nuisance to put on and a worse nuisance to keep on...
I avoid the issue whenever possible by portraying an officer so I can wear the WWI-era leather leggings instead of the frustrating puttees.

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There's a reason the WW2 US paratroop/airborne boots (which were high-cut leather boots) became the near-universal combat boot since WW2!

British paratroopers never adopted the high top boot until the rest of the army did, probably in the 1980s. They experimented with a rubber-soled boot but apparently they felt that was unnecessary. German paratroopers had special boots but I don't know about the Russians.

An interesting thing about both the Russian and American paratroops is that they both initially had a lot of input from smoke jumpers in their training and equipment.

BlueTrain said:

British paratroopers never adopted the high top boot until the rest of the army did, probably in the 1980s. They experimented with a rubber-soled boot but apparently they felt that was unnecessary. German paratroopers had special boots but I don't know about the Russians.

An interesting thing about both the Russian and American paratroops is that they both initially had a lot of input from smoke jumpers in their training and equipment.

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The Brits adopted the taller boot as standard in 1984. During WW2, they were wearing much the same ammo boot as had been worn since the turn of the century. Those were replaced by the cheaper (in every sense) Boots DMS (Direct Moulded Sole) sometime around 1960, an ankle boot with a similar shape but much lower quality and with a glued-on rubber sole. These were long unpopular with the squaddies; eyewitness accounts from the Falklands / Las Malvinas conflict in 1982 recall Brit squaddies pinching the taller, better quality boots from dead Argentinian troops who no longer had any use for them.

A taller boot makes much sense, though definitely more expensive, which is probably the reason puttees and canvas gaiters were such an issue standard with short boots for so long.

I have a pair of every issue boot the British have issued since they started issuing the model with the capped toe. Earlier ankle boots were only a little different. I also have a pair of the "Boots, CWW," intended for cold weather. I don't, however, have a pair of the current issue brown boots or either the jungle boots or desert boots. Apparently it didn't occur to anyone that a taller boot was better. Maybe they aren't. Considering what soldiers have worn into battle in the last two or three centuries, one could easily conclude that it doesn't make as much difference as we think, color notwithstanding.

During the American Civil War, shoes were what foot soldiers wore, not boots. I think they were called bootees and were basically what we might call chukka boots. Fashionable Southern cavalrymen wore thigh-high riding boots. Outdoor writers before WWI recommended low boots and long-distance hikers these days usually wear the lightest boots or shoes they can manage with. But many contemporary army boots feature fabric tops and are usually lighter than ones previously worn. Soldiers also used to be issued (before WWI) lighter shoes for use in barracks, having only been issued one pair of marching boots. There is a rumor, unconfirmed, that soldiers these days even have sneakers! Can you imagine that?