Combat Boots

image borrowed from bing

Combat Boots

“Most of my young years were spent under

the boots of the military.”--Paulo Coelho.

Back in the 

Mary Jane smoky 60’s, when

I was in 

the Navy, we

called all military boots brogans;

the first time

I had ever

heard the term. Smart-assed

kids that we

were, we would

insult each other by saying,

“Your mother wears

combat boots!”. Turns

out brogan is derived from

the Irish word

brogue, which meant

any rugged boot that barely

covered the ankle.

During the French

Revolution, aristocrats quit wearing big

buckled boots; fearing

the guillotine, they

began wearing laced-up boots.

Thomas Jefferson, in

tribute, in 1801

started the fashion of wearing

laced-up boots--

and later all

laced up footwear were called

Jeffersons. During the

Civil War, soldiers

all wore the 1851 Jefferson

brogan; square-toed,

with four eyelets

& leather laces--but hard

to tell apart,

North or South, 

once covered in mud &

blood. Somewhere along

the way, we

began to refer to troop

deployment as boots

on the ground.

Our  brave soldiers wore those

sturdy leather brogans

during World Wars

I & II, and Korea--

but in Vietnam

the brogan became

the jungle boot, with heavy

canvas replacing the

leather sides. Now

during the 21st Century, as

we send soldiers

the Middle Eastern

deserts, scorching temps of 130-

140 degrees literally

melt the combat

boots. Brogans today have become

symbolic of the

dead soldier who

once wore them. We all

remember the Eyes

Wide Open exhibit

at Bradley University where 230

military boots were

placed in neat

rows of eight; heart-breaking

as Art, as

truth. We are

now used to seeing images

of thousands of

empty brogans, eyelets

open, laces loose, with dog

tags, flowers, and

flags poking out

of them, often placed alongside

rifles shoved into

the ground with

an empty helmet perched atop.

Personally, the only

military boots I

ever admired were the pair

worn by Neil

Armstrong as he

left those indelible boot sole

prints in the

gray-white moondust,

boots of hope, leaving beautiful

imprints that, although

not forgotten, have

not yet been bested by

boots on Mars. 

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets Poetics

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