pbi said:
I spent 11 years as an officer in battalions and I always wore ankle boots with clickers for ceremonial parades. I only wear oxfords off parade. If you are doing "real" drill, or marching for any extended period of time, the oxford simply does not provide the support necessary. It also looks and sounds wimpy, IMHO. Cheers.
Ditto ... even back in the dark ages, when we still wore khaki service dress and Sam Browne belts, many (most?) of us wore brown dress boots. Dress boots â “ lighter than soldiers'
boots, ankle, black - were available in a variety of 'finishes' and were often worn, by older generations, with spats, but did not, I think, have clickers. We got them either in the UK or from a shop in London, Ontario â “ Locharts, or something like that if memory serves. Oxfords were for office workers - the adjutant, IO, etc.
As an aside, I had a young female officer work for me in Ottawa back in the '80s. She was a smart, efficient and tiny young woman (about five foot f___ all with both hands in the air) â “ good athlete, too. She always wore trousers and almost always wore boots â “ the same boots (maybe just same type of boots) she had worn at RMC. I never asked. My clerk did ... and she passed on to me that they (the boots) were comfortable and made Capt. S________ feel a wee bit taller. I certainly did not care what my officers wore so long as it was neat and tidy, etc and if
feeling taller made her work even harder then, as an old soldier used to say, â Å“free beds 'n' boots for everyone!â ?